Climbing the TowerBallad on Climbing Youzhou Tower
Witness not the sages of the past, Perceive not the wise of the future, Reflecting on heaven and earth eternal, Tears flowing down I lament in loneliness.- by Chen Zi'angPart One: The Sorrow in Your HeartThe moon was high in the night sky, a white crescent like the curving claw of a black beast curled in the heavens, and stars glittered like water on the scales of the same beast, as though it had just rose from some celestial stream. On the earth, far below the celestial serpents coils of night, a tawny skinned form pulled its self from a mountain pool into the cool night air without a shiver, and on to a flat rock beside the sluggish but clear snow melt fed stream. Long, glistening black hair hung in wet strands around the figure's shoulders, a distinct curl in it from where it was usually perpetually bound at the back of the skull still visible despite the washing it had received in the stream. Hands, long fingered and strongly muscled, brushed back the hair except for a few unruly strands that clung to neck and forehead. Eyes that were as dark as age darkened mahogany scanned the edge of the clearing out of paranoid habit more than anything. Chang Wufei, warrior son of the Chang Clan now exiled from their mountain lands of northern China decades ago to a distant and crumbling colony, had come home. He had decided to disappear from the war for a few weeks, his presence unmissed in the confusion, he knew, and find his family lands in the Mongolian borderlands of China. No more than three hundred square miles of forest, shear mountains, and river rapids, with little useful land to anyone. Since his family's removal, it had gone wild, or at least what further it could have gone from its barely tamed state. His blood told him more than any map or deed could tell him. He was home.A careful seeming night breeze caressed bare flesh, and Wufei smiled introspectively. Two days ago he had made camp beside this stream in the high hills, in a sheltered cleft like valley carved by the progression of this lonely run of water to the broiling, rapid torn river below in the valley. Since then he felt as wild as the mountains themselves, and more at peace than he ever had in his life. This was a place he was destined to be; this was right. He had swiftly learned how to hunt the sparse game in the forest, hind and large birds, and knew already the flora that was edible. He was a survivor, he had lived off less in his time in the colony when things had been scarce, and this place was a land of plenty to him. Behind him, about twenty yards away, the light from his fire danced warmly, illuminating his camp and the prone form of Nataku. His camp was simple: a lone tent, a wash line, and a cleaned and dressed hind carcass he had killed a day ago and been eating from since. To the side was the rough and well-worn military motorcycle that served as close range transportation. It had not been run since he arrived, it was too loud in such silence.The wind touched him again, blowing quickly drying strands of hair loose from the rest, up and around his face. The dark eyed boy stood, and pulled his clothes close to dress. The touch of soft, freshly washed silk was a simple joy to the Chinese boy, but one he cherished secretly. He had washed the loose shirt and pants before bathing, and both were now dry though wrinkled hopelessly. He simply had learned to ignore the deep wrinkles in the last few years. With a sash, he belted the pants as he stood, and then tied back his hair carefully. Years of training had caused it now to always form its seemingly painstakingly groomed appearance with little work. No stray hairs escaped the band, and all formed the strait tail at a perfectly even length. While he admired the gall of the American, Duo Maxwell, to wear such a mass of hair, he still wondered why the boy wore it in such a demeaning way as a braid. Perhaps if they met again, he would ask, but he doubted he would ever understand him or any of the others properly.Barefoot, he walked back to the camp. The fire was warm, cheerful, and a kettle of water was boiling happily suspended from a spit above it. Perfect timing. Wufei turned and dug a battered tin cup from a rucksack near the tree where his kill was hung as well as a ladle and a small white bag tied with cord. Setting the cup down near the grass mat he had placed close to the fire, he ladled boiling water into the cup and hung the ladle on the spit support. He opened the bag and added a carefully measured pinch of the herbal tea mix to the cup. It was a bitter, strong and dark tea, far different from what he had grown up drinking, but one he found very appealing and head clearing. He left it to seep and walked back over to the tree. He pulled a short hunting knife from the tree and used it to trim a long thin strip of meat from the ribs of the hind. He cleaned the knife, placed it back in the tree, and walked over to the fire, venison in hand. He placed the meat on a flat, hot rock near the edge of the fire he had been using as a cooking surface and listened as it sizzled appetizingly, sitting on the grass mat next to his tea, legs crossed in their usual fashion. The night air was invigorating, he thought, so much different from the nights in the crumbling fragile colony that was the last stronghold of his family. Yet he still missed what had been his home for his whole life. He missed the smiles of his grandmother, the drilling with his brothers and father, the work with his uncles and cousins on the hydroponics farm that supported the family. It had been a hard life, far from comfortable, but it had been home. Yet this was home too, an older home of mountains and forests, and one that he had only heard of in stories from the eldest of the clan, who had left it as a child in the forced relocation to space. He shook his head and turned the cooking slab of flesh on the stone with a thick, sharpened stick. His tea was strong enough at last to drink, and he lifted the hot metal cup in his left hand and drank deeply. The warmth spread through him, and settled comfortingly in his gut, and he felt slight rumblings of hunger prompted by the tea. The venison cooked fast, even in this primitive way of cooking it, and it was done enough to eat in another few minutes. Using the same stick he had turned it with, Wufei lifted the cut of meat, and began to eat it strait from the stick, headless of the fresh from the fire sizzle of heat.The meal lasted only a few minutes at best, the tea washing down the tough and lean meat. The carcass would last him another few days fresh, and he would begin cutting and salting pieces of it tomorrow with the sun. While those carefully schooled manors had gone to the hounds, he had become far from wild. He knew what he needed to do to survive, and spent most of the time doing those things. But there were other things, older habits, that he didn't break either. One of which was an evening ritual he had preformed since he was a small boy, barely able to understand why he had to do what he did, before he had even been given his first sword. He cleaned up after his meager dinner, rinsed the cup in the sluggish mountain stream, and packed everything away. He banked the fire, cleared the area around it meticulously. Now it was time. From the base of the tree that he had hung the carcass of the hind from, he picked up with most prized possession: the hand forged sword that had been given to him by his father as a wedding present. Its handle was bound in white rayskin, braided in deep blue, with a scabbard of the same color of dyed wood, inlayed with bits of mother of pearl along the length like dragon scales. The blade was old, having survived the relocation, but the handle and scabbard new, since the originals had been destroyed in the exodus. It was his one real possession, his one link to his family and past. Wufei slid the scabbard into his sash carefully, letting the spacers hold it in place.He moved away from the fire, towards the edge of his small clearing, and carefully oriented himself to have the most room possible. The dark haired pilot of the Shenlong slowly assumed a concentrating stance, legs braced and back strait, one hand resting on the butt of the sword, and slowly began the mental routine that governed his battles. His eyes did not so much as close, but stop seeing beyond their lenses. His mind focused, drawing energy from the centers of his body out into his limbs, concentrating it in his hands and feet. He felt sharply the grit of the earth beneath his feet and the damp tang of distant rain or mist in the air, smelled the pines and bamboo and clean water of the forest. With a grace born of no thought, the curved blade left the scabbard in a glowing silver arc, lit into white fire by the rising moon and stars, tinged red by the close fire. It continued its arc, and the body followed by reflex. The flesh was an extension of the blade, moving the steel to where it wished to be, not seeking to control. Through forms old enough to have lost their names in the distant mists of time, the bronze skinned body flowed like poured gold. All of the anger of the war and battles vanished, pushed out and down into the ground by the energy of the steel. But when the flowing forms ended and the sword again returned to its dark scabbard, there was no longer the sense of the mountains and rivers surrounding the boy. He was someplace very distant. Part 2: Life is Like Empty Mountain RangesAn old and bloated red sun hung low in the pale red and blue sky, over a place as far into the autumn of its life as the sun, bounded by an invisible horizon where the pale green of the grass and the pale yellow of the sky slowly faded into one another. The garden was old, the trees and bushes stunted into gnarled knots and twists like the fingers of an old woman, the grass a pale green clipped close to the ground. It was an empty place, of crossing white gravel and dark slate paths, meandering lost through the groves of trees and topiary gardens, where winds were both hot and cold at play like wild children in the grass. The winds smelled old and empty, like the closets of abandoned houses, dusty, dry and stale. The garden was empty except for the winds, a place older than time and far beyond its touch.And in the middle of an intersection between a white gravel path and a black slate tiled path, Chang Wufei found himself standing, his hand still clasp on the hilt of the sword at his waist, the wind cooling the sweat on his body from the workout. The dark eyed pilot of the Shenlong shivered, unnerved and unwilling to allow himself to be unnerved simultaneously. Where am I, he wondered, eyes scanning the empty, desolate place in search of anything familiar. There was nothing, nothing except the crossing paths of white crushed gravel and dark slate that merged to a checkerboard of texture and color in the intersection where he stood.And thus faced with the option of gravel or slate tile, and thinking only of his bare feet, Wufei turned and walked down the black slate path towards the low hung sun. Hours could have passed, or days, or only minutes, Wufei could not tell. The sun hung motionless in the sky, throbbing heart-like against the pale colors of the sky. There was no sense of the passage of time any more than the sense of a passage of space. The garden was empty, silent, and still but for the wind on all three counts. No birds sang, not even the rude cawing of a crow or the abstract calls of a mockingbird. No animals moved in the bush or grass, not even grasshoppers or aphids crawled on the blades. The garden was lifeless, it seemed, except for the resolutely walking form of the Shenlong pilot. Wufei stopped, and looked around, finding himself next to a dark twisted topiary growing next to the path. It was shaped like a dragon; long and sinuous, outstretched from the ground where its tail formed the roots of the shrub up into curves of foliage that seemed impossible. Eyes of dark red blossoms focused light yellow centers on him from high above, and Wufei found himself looking away, without thinking. Beneath its gaping maw, tucked into the folds of green leafy flesh, a single white flower bloomed in place of the dragon pearl. But it was nothing more than a strangely trimmed plant among many in this odd landscape. With no more certainty and even less hope of understanding where he was, Wufei turned and continued to walk towards the never moving sun.More time past, perhaps days, perhaps years, for the feeling of the passage of time was non existent in this place. He grew more and more uneasy, unsure of any ideas he may have had about where he was. This was no dream, it was too real, too tactile, and yet it could be nothing else but. He watched the movements of the wind through the trees, and realized it was like watching a looped holographic projection. It was the same wind, the same leaves, the same air, every time the wind blew. It was though he was caught in some projectionist loop of film.The thought made the Chinese pilot stop in his tracks and look around. He had just crossed another intersection of checkerboard white gravel and black slate, what could have been the second or hundredth one like it. Up ahead he saw something in the distance, green and looming, on the left side of the path. It couldn't be, he thought as he broke into a run towards it. For a two hand count of meters he ran, bare feet slamming into stone headless of the bruised heels and toes, until he all but skidded to a stop in front of the shape.It was the same topiary. Down to every detail, the pruned scales and blight spots on the leaves, it was the same dragon topiary he had passed before. There was no question in his mind any more that there was something going on more than an empty garden. With his hand on the hilt of his sword, he turned around sharply, and was confronted by yet another unexpected sight.The figure was tall, towering over him by a good half meter if not more, dressed in a formless, hooded robe of a rough spun dark brown cloth that hung in flaps and folds that hid any hint at body size and shape, falling in brown pools of cloth on the tile path. The hood hung low, obscuring in a dark shadow any hit of a face or features. Wufei went instinctively into a defensive crouch, sword coming up above his head in a silver arc to a position to defend from any move the taller form might make to attack him. "Who are you?" he demanded, trying hard to keep the panic that was almost fear out of his voice. He scolded himself for it instantly. Fear clouded the mind, made one slow to act. Fear killed the mind, and in so doing, often killed the person. He waited, sword blade unwavering, glowing a bloody silver in the light from the dying sun. The figure did not move to even so much as breath it seemed, nor did it speak. "Who are you?" He demanded louder, angry now at this silent thing that seemed to be his tormenter. His mind was racing, but kept coming back to the same thought. Oh my blessed Natal, help me find my way amongst this madness, he all but screamed in his mind. The figure was still without a voice, but it rewarded him with movement. From inside the folds and falls of brown cloth, a long arm extended, robe falling back to reveal a pale skinned hand. The hand was simultaneously human and very alien, with too many joints and far too many fingers, but its motion was one of command. The fingers curled inward on themselves towards the upturned palm, beckoning Wufei to follow. With out waiting to see if the Chinese pilot headed or understood the motion, the form turned fluidly, its robes moving like the dark brown waters of a swamp churned by the passing of an alligator, and began to walk away. Wufei stood from his crouch, and puzzled for a moment before following the long striding steps of the figure in the brown robe. Perhaps it would lead him to someone or someplace that would answer his questions, that would return him back to the mountains and his unguarded Gundam. He shuddered at the thought of Nataku in the hands of the enemy. Never would he allow such a thing. He moved swiftly to follow; sword still in hand and at the ready. There was no need to take chances.The figure in brown reached the intersection of white gravel and black slate, and turned perpendicular to the slate path to follow the white gravel. Catching up at last, the youngest son of the Chang clan moved to walk on the soft but stiff grass beside the path, mindful of bruised and already sore bare feet, a pace behind the swift, fluid steps of the tall form. Together, they walked, the only two signs of life in a place empty of both life and change, a place caught in some strange loop of time, beyond all reach or touch of its slowly defiling hands. Two living figures, separated by a cruel silver arc of steel held between them, moving to the unknown purpose of one, and the unthought purposes of the other, towards an unknown destination beyond the invisible horizon of the Garden of Forking Ways.Part Three: Where Snow Awaits Your VisitOn a plain unbound by a horizon rendered invisible in a slow gradient from the yellow green of the grass and trees to the pale pinks and oranges of the sky, two figures moved with purpose along an arrow shot path of white gravel. One walked with the boneless, formless fluidity of a creature more at home in the spirit than in the flesh, wrapped in a course homespun robe of brow cloth that only added to the figure's grace. Its flesh was invisible, hidden in the folds and falls of cloth that hooded the face and spilled luxuriantly onto the gravel into a graceful train of sackcloth, but its movements betrayed its lack of humanity in the ease of its too many jointed strides. Behind it, barefoot on the grass beside the path, the second figure struggled to keep up, its human clumsiness only made more obvious by the blade of drawn steel held out against an inanimate attacker, stained red by the light of an aged sun that hug low in the sky. Loose silk covered legs and torso, leaving the bronzed flesh of face, arms and feet exposed to the slowly frothing winds of the garden. The figure was beyond its element, grasping for purchase on a slope that had no rise or run, in a place where time ran in the shape of a sphere, but with more dimensions.Chang Wufei was beginning to tire. It was not the walking, nor was it the soreness of his feet, nor anything physical in of its self: it was the steady creeping strangeness of the day. He was in such an alien setting; surrounded by such alien sensations, that his mind refused to wrap itself around the idea that this was even happing to him. He was a skeptic to the core, but raised with a traditional sense of religious duty. And this place, and this thing, fit no where into anything that he understood in the workings of time or space. So he had attempted to do with it as he did most thins he could not accept: block out its existence in his mind. But he simply could not continue to block out the continuing strangeness of it all. The empty, looped garden that seemed strait from the Hells of his ancestors, the silent, multi-jointed mute with too many fingers, it was too much for any sane person to deal with, even him. It wearied him beyond his ability, beyond what the war, constant infighting, a lifetime of thin living, the death of Nataku, or anything else had been able to do to him. All he wanted was for things to make sense once more.Ahead of him, looming above the slender and towering form of his guide, a line of huge, gray stone statues had appeared in the distance, obviously large simply by the size prospective dictated them at this distance. Seven mammoth stone forms, each human, towered out of a stand of trees. The path had widened slightly, and began to be intersected at regular intervals by curved paths perpendicular to the white gravel, as though a spiral path were slowly tightening in on their destination. The statues were the first real sign of perspective Wufei had seen, and he was grateful for them, as nothing more than a sign of the normal functioning of nature. When the statues had begun to fill almost half the sky, something changed subtly in the world. It was not so much as passing into something, but passing out of it. There was suddenly time where there had been no time before, only the perpetual loop of the winds, and distance where there had been only the feeling of being trapped in the same loop of painted garden for eternity. At this transition, the grass became greener, and pairs of fanciful topiaries lined the lane. Everything was more alive, more real, than it had been before, and for all of this the Shenlong Gundam's pilot was infinitely relieved. His mute guide continued, pace never wavering, silent but for the burlap swish of the robes with every step. The landscaping slowly changed as they approached closer to the statues, with more bushes and topiaries, most of the old style white roses, and even grape arbors that spanned lazily above the path at regular intervals. There was more a sense of order, and of planning, a sense of human presence that had been lacking before. Despite this, Wufei and his silent, many-jointed guide were still the only signs of animal life in the garden. The trees became thicker, forming a high, green vault above the pathway. They were old hardwoods, Dutch Elms mainly, their dark green leaves ravishing the eye with their gloss and stealing the red sunlight like an old man's money, casting deep shadows. From the branches, tendrils of death gray Spanish moss hung like the hair of the demons the dragons chased away at the new years. Wufei almost paused at the mental relation. Both demons and dragons had been costumed performers, reenacting old traditions transplanted from Earth with the family. But in his memories from early childhood they seemed starkly real in this context, as though the surrealism of his environment had given credible life to the gray haired demons of his childhood. Perhaps, he thought as he watched the red glow slowly fade from the blade of his still drawn sword, turning the blade the same color as the moss, they are real after all, and I have only just now accepted it. The thought made him dip the blade of his sword ever so slightly. Again another change. As the vaulting formed by the branches of the trees grew thicker, blocking the sky from view all together, pairs of torches joined the edge of the path, just far enough from the edge to still allow Wufei an unobstructed line of grass to walk. The light was flickering and cool, as though electric, yet the flames were clearly visible. And then he saw the true source of the light, and felt the breath go out of his lungs as though he had been struck with a blow from a percussion riffle. From around the base of the trees, small globes of light, each no bigger than an insect moved, floating out into the path in swirls as though blown by the wind. They curled close to him and he saw inside their tiny lights, they were very tiny winged women. Each was different from the others, in face and dress, but all were very obviously of fine, old Chinese blood. They moved in careful swirls, lighting on the blade edge of his sword, curling close to his face. And they did the same to his guide, who seemed oblivious to the tiny, glowing women as they turned the folds of the brown robe into glowing rivers of light, outlining the form in a molten silver glow. And just as suddenly, they were gone, disappearing behind them as they walked in their same curling flights like dust motes filmed in reverse, falling back to the trees on silent, tinny wings of silver. Wufei stared in awe, and then found yet more to gape about as the trees parted with the suddenness of dawn in the desert. His guide had progressed out into a clearing, surrounding a stone dais of some sort, which was open to the sky. Dead seeming red light lit the place, and Wufei realized the clearing was lined on the far side by the bases of the statues he had seen before they entered the trees. But his dark eyes focused on the center of the dais, and did not leave there again. A podium of sorts was facing him, and standing at it was a figure dressed in an old, stained, brown robe, hood pulled to hide the eyes and face. Before the figure was a book, spread open in the middle of its thick expanse of pages. The figure looked at him, or more oriented its head towards him, and spoke."Chang Wufei, son of the honorable Chang clan, descendants of the Dragons of the Mountains, I bid you welcome to my realm." The voice was like the turning of old, dry velum pages, like the slow movements of desert sands across each other, dry and whispering, bold and commanding in the same. It was both the voice of an old and young man simultaneously, ageless and yet old as time its self. "Welcome," the figure that had been his mute and fluid guide said, "To the Garden of Forking Ways, the realm of my master"And in that alien place outside of time, the figure of the boy descended from the noblest blood of the Dragons of the Mountains stood with his sword raised to the one to whom no man could raise a sword. The boy faced unquavering and unknowing what brave men had crumbled to ruins when facing, faced what had destroyed nations and empires, entire families and peoples, mountain ranges and rivers, and entire suns and universes as unblinkingly as it had spawned the creation of the very same. Eyes cold and clear like the dark waters of the border rivers of the Mongolian highlands looked unwavering on the thing dreaded by emperors and common men alike for longer than there had been a difference between the two. Chang Wufei, pilot of the Shenlong Gundam, faced Destiny.Part Four: Yet You Make Your Solitary Retreat"Ah, such spine and sprit for one so young and fragile." The man in brown said. This man, this figure in brown on his dais of stone, turned his head down from the young boy before him to turn a page in the book before him. The wind rose and blew its hot breath through the trees, and something distant stirred, as though the turning of the page had been another step in the life of this green hell that had been named the Garden of Forking Ways. There was nothing about this place that felt right, nothing that was right, except to its master and creator, second eldest of the Endless, Destiny. Chang Wufei stood lest that a dozen yards from the second most powerful being in the known Universe, ignorant of what he faced, sword blade raised in challenge to the indignities he had suffered."Who are you?" the Chinese pilot demanded, dark eyes flashing in the clotted light of the invisible sun. "Who are you and why have you brought me where ever I am? What do you want from me!" The last came out pinched with an edge of panic and fear. He was loosing his grip on things once more, to the point of believing madness before believing what he saw."Ah. So full of questions, you are. How differently wonderful." The voice was like sand dunes dragging their weight across the seas of sand, moved only by the winds fierce whip. "And how deserving of answers too." The voice had become a whisper of dry paper. "I want nothing from you, son of the Chang clan, for there is nothing you could offer me that I have need of. I have been offered kingdoms and harems and every mineral you have ever thought of as valuable and then some, but none of it I have uses for. No, I do not want anything from you." Wufei's eyes hardened visibly. Everyone wants something, a rule he had learned long ago, and everyone had a price, even himself. "So untrusting, and rightly so. Summoned to a place outside mortal understanding, with none of your precious rhyme or reason." The papery voice smiled acidly. "Child, you do not realize what you are dealing with. I am Destiny, second eldest of the Endless, the personification of fate and order in this chaotic universe. I govern all action and inaction, and" the figure paused, and turned a page, head angled down to it for a moment to scan the page before returning to center on Wufei, "I govern the lives of every living thing, even their deaths. So put your toy sword away, boy, it can do me no harm.""How do I know you mean no harm to me." His muscles were beginning to cramp, held taunt and ready to spring. The tendons in his legs and back, weakened by their lack of use compared to his arms and torso, were beginning to scream with the strain of holding the burden of his other muscles. A loose strand of hair had found its way into his eyes, and was beginning to annoy him."Oh very well, boy. You have my word on my Great Book that no harm will come to you from either my servants or myself. You are, after all, a guest in my realm and at least deserving of that." Wufei waited a moment, then relaxed. With a practiced move, tense muscles gave way and fluidly returned the sword to its sheath at his waist in a melting of tension. His hand, however, still rested on the hilt, not close on it, but ready none the less. Trust did not come easy. Destiny gave a small sigh of annoyance, but was smiling beneath the shadow of his hood at the boy. Such spirit, and such spine, was a rare thing in a species that had the collective drive of sheep. The Chinese boy had straitened from his defensive crouch, and now stood rod strait looking up at Destiny, nobility oozing from every pore of his body like some coating slime."If you want nothing from me, and mean me no harm, why then am I here?" Wufei demanded. It was a fa
Witness not the sages of the past, Perceive not the wise of the future, Reflecting on heaven and earth eternal, Tears flowing down I lament in loneliness.- by Chen Zi'angPart One: The Sorrow in Your HeartThe moon was high in the night sky, a white crescent like the curving claw of a black beast curled in the heavens, and stars glittered like water on the scales of the same beast, as though it had just rose from some celestial stream. On the earth, far below the celestial serpents coils of night, a tawny skinned form pulled its self from a mountain pool into the cool night air without a shiver, and on to a flat rock beside the sluggish but clear snow melt fed stream. Long, glistening black hair hung in wet strands around the figure's shoulders, a distinct curl in it from where it was usually perpetually bound at the back of the skull still visible despite the washing it had received in the stream. Hands, long fingered and strongly muscled, brushed back the hair except for a few unruly strands that clung to neck and forehead. Eyes that were as dark as age darkened mahogany scanned the edge of the clearing out of paranoid habit more than anything. Chang Wufei, warrior son of the Chang Clan now exiled from their mountain lands of northern China decades ago to a distant and crumbling colony, had come home. He had decided to disappear from the war for a few weeks, his presence unmissed in the confusion, he knew, and find his family lands in the Mongolian borderlands of China. No more than three hundred square miles of forest, shear mountains, and river rapids, with little useful land to anyone. Since his family's removal, it had gone wild, or at least what further it could have gone from its barely tamed state. His blood told him more than any map or deed could tell him. He was home.A careful seeming night breeze caressed bare flesh, and Wufei smiled introspectively. Two days ago he had made camp beside this stream in the high hills, in a sheltered cleft like valley carved by the progression of this lonely run of water to the broiling, rapid torn river below in the valley. Since then he felt as wild as the mountains themselves, and more at peace than he ever had in his life. This was a place he was destined to be; this was right. He had swiftly learned how to hunt the sparse game in the forest, hind and large birds, and knew already the flora that was edible. He was a survivor, he had lived off less in his time in the colony when things had been scarce, and this place was a land of plenty to him. Behind him, about twenty yards away, the light from his fire danced warmly, illuminating his camp and the prone form of Nataku. His camp was simple: a lone tent, a wash line, and a cleaned and dressed hind carcass he had killed a day ago and been eating from since. To the side was the rough and well-worn military motorcycle that served as close range transportation. It had not been run since he arrived, it was too loud in such silence.The wind touched him again, blowing quickly drying strands of hair loose from the rest, up and around his face. The dark eyed boy stood, and pulled his clothes close to dress. The touch of soft, freshly washed silk was a simple joy to the Chinese boy, but one he cherished secretly. He had washed the loose shirt and pants before bathing, and both were now dry though wrinkled hopelessly. He simply had learned to ignore the deep wrinkles in the last few years. With a sash, he belted the pants as he stood, and then tied back his hair carefully. Years of training had caused it now to always form its seemingly painstakingly groomed appearance with little work. No stray hairs escaped the band, and all formed the strait tail at a perfectly even length. While he admired the gall of the American, Duo Maxwell, to wear such a mass of hair, he still wondered why the boy wore it in such a demeaning way as a braid. Perhaps if they met again, he would ask, but he doubted he would ever understand him or any of the others properly.Barefoot, he walked back to the camp. The fire was warm, cheerful, and a kettle of water was boiling happily suspended from a spit above it. Perfect timing. Wufei turned and dug a battered tin cup from a rucksack near the tree where his kill was hung as well as a ladle and a small white bag tied with cord. Setting the cup down near the grass mat he had placed close to the fire, he ladled boiling water into the cup and hung the ladle on the spit support. He opened the bag and added a carefully measured pinch of the herbal tea mix to the cup. It was a bitter, strong and dark tea, far different from what he had grown up drinking, but one he found very appealing and head clearing. He left it to seep and walked back over to the tree. He pulled a short hunting knife from the tree and used it to trim a long thin strip of meat from the ribs of the hind. He cleaned the knife, placed it back in the tree, and walked over to the fire, venison in hand. He placed the meat on a flat, hot rock near the edge of the fire he had been using as a cooking surface and listened as it sizzled appetizingly, sitting on the grass mat next to his tea, legs crossed in their usual fashion. The night air was invigorating, he thought, so much different from the nights in the crumbling fragile colony that was the last stronghold of his family. Yet he still missed what had been his home for his whole life. He missed the smiles of his grandmother, the drilling with his brothers and father, the work with his uncles and cousins on the hydroponics farm that supported the family. It had been a hard life, far from comfortable, but it had been home. Yet this was home too, an older home of mountains and forests, and one that he had only heard of in stories from the eldest of the clan, who had left it as a child in the forced relocation to space. He shook his head and turned the cooking slab of flesh on the stone with a thick, sharpened stick. His tea was strong enough at last to drink, and he lifted the hot metal cup in his left hand and drank deeply. The warmth spread through him, and settled comfortingly in his gut, and he felt slight rumblings of hunger prompted by the tea. The venison cooked fast, even in this primitive way of cooking it, and it was done enough to eat in another few minutes. Using the same stick he had turned it with, Wufei lifted the cut of meat, and began to eat it strait from the stick, headless of the fresh from the fire sizzle of heat.The meal lasted only a few minutes at best, the tea washing down the tough and lean meat. The carcass would last him another few days fresh, and he would begin cutting and salting pieces of it tomorrow with the sun. While those carefully schooled manors had gone to the hounds, he had become far from wild. He knew what he needed to do to survive, and spent most of the time doing those things. But there were other things, older habits, that he didn't break either. One of which was an evening ritual he had preformed since he was a small boy, barely able to understand why he had to do what he did, before he had even been given his first sword. He cleaned up after his meager dinner, rinsed the cup in the sluggish mountain stream, and packed everything away. He banked the fire, cleared the area around it meticulously. Now it was time. From the base of the tree that he had hung the carcass of the hind from, he picked up with most prized possession: the hand forged sword that had been given to him by his father as a wedding present. Its handle was bound in white rayskin, braided in deep blue, with a scabbard of the same color of dyed wood, inlayed with bits of mother of pearl along the length like dragon scales. The blade was old, having survived the relocation, but the handle and scabbard new, since the originals had been destroyed in the exodus. It was his one real possession, his one link to his family and past. Wufei slid the scabbard into his sash carefully, letting the spacers hold it in place.He moved away from the fire, towards the edge of his small clearing, and carefully oriented himself to have the most room possible. The dark haired pilot of the Shenlong slowly assumed a concentrating stance, legs braced and back strait, one hand resting on the butt of the sword, and slowly began the mental routine that governed his battles. His eyes did not so much as close, but stop seeing beyond their lenses. His mind focused, drawing energy from the centers of his body out into his limbs, concentrating it in his hands and feet. He felt sharply the grit of the earth beneath his feet and the damp tang of distant rain or mist in the air, smelled the pines and bamboo and clean water of the forest. With a grace born of no thought, the curved blade left the scabbard in a glowing silver arc, lit into white fire by the rising moon and stars, tinged red by the close fire. It continued its arc, and the body followed by reflex. The flesh was an extension of the blade, moving the steel to where it wished to be, not seeking to control. Through forms old enough to have lost their names in the distant mists of time, the bronze skinned body flowed like poured gold. All of the anger of the war and battles vanished, pushed out and down into the ground by the energy of the steel. But when the flowing forms ended and the sword again returned to its dark scabbard, there was no longer the sense of the mountains and rivers surrounding the boy. He was someplace very distant. Part 2: Life is Like Empty Mountain RangesAn old and bloated red sun hung low in the pale red and blue sky, over a place as far into the autumn of its life as the sun, bounded by an invisible horizon where the pale green of the grass and the pale yellow of the sky slowly faded into one another. The garden was old, the trees and bushes stunted into gnarled knots and twists like the fingers of an old woman, the grass a pale green clipped close to the ground. It was an empty place, of crossing white gravel and dark slate paths, meandering lost through the groves of trees and topiary gardens, where winds were both hot and cold at play like wild children in the grass. The winds smelled old and empty, like the closets of abandoned houses, dusty, dry and stale. The garden was empty except for the winds, a place older than time and far beyond its touch.And in the middle of an intersection between a white gravel path and a black slate tiled path, Chang Wufei found himself standing, his hand still clasp on the hilt of the sword at his waist, the wind cooling the sweat on his body from the workout. The dark eyed pilot of the Shenlong shivered, unnerved and unwilling to allow himself to be unnerved simultaneously. Where am I, he wondered, eyes scanning the empty, desolate place in search of anything familiar. There was nothing, nothing except the crossing paths of white crushed gravel and dark slate that merged to a checkerboard of texture and color in the intersection where he stood.And thus faced with the option of gravel or slate tile, and thinking only of his bare feet, Wufei turned and walked down the black slate path towards the low hung sun. Hours could have passed, or days, or only minutes, Wufei could not tell. The sun hung motionless in the sky, throbbing heart-like against the pale colors of the sky. There was no sense of the passage of time any more than the sense of a passage of space. The garden was empty, silent, and still but for the wind on all three counts. No birds sang, not even the rude cawing of a crow or the abstract calls of a mockingbird. No animals moved in the bush or grass, not even grasshoppers or aphids crawled on the blades. The garden was lifeless, it seemed, except for the resolutely walking form of the Shenlong pilot. Wufei stopped, and looked around, finding himself next to a dark twisted topiary growing next to the path. It was shaped like a dragon; long and sinuous, outstretched from the ground where its tail formed the roots of the shrub up into curves of foliage that seemed impossible. Eyes of dark red blossoms focused light yellow centers on him from high above, and Wufei found himself looking away, without thinking. Beneath its gaping maw, tucked into the folds of green leafy flesh, a single white flower bloomed in place of the dragon pearl. But it was nothing more than a strangely trimmed plant among many in this odd landscape. With no more certainty and even less hope of understanding where he was, Wufei turned and continued to walk towards the never moving sun.More time past, perhaps days, perhaps years, for the feeling of the passage of time was non existent in this place. He grew more and more uneasy, unsure of any ideas he may have had about where he was. This was no dream, it was too real, too tactile, and yet it could be nothing else but. He watched the movements of the wind through the trees, and realized it was like watching a looped holographic projection. It was the same wind, the same leaves, the same air, every time the wind blew. It was though he was caught in some projectionist loop of film.The thought made the Chinese pilot stop in his tracks and look around. He had just crossed another intersection of checkerboard white gravel and black slate, what could have been the second or hundredth one like it. Up ahead he saw something in the distance, green and looming, on the left side of the path. It couldn't be, he thought as he broke into a run towards it. For a two hand count of meters he ran, bare feet slamming into stone headless of the bruised heels and toes, until he all but skidded to a stop in front of the shape.It was the same topiary. Down to every detail, the pruned scales and blight spots on the leaves, it was the same dragon topiary he had passed before. There was no question in his mind any more that there was something going on more than an empty garden. With his hand on the hilt of his sword, he turned around sharply, and was confronted by yet another unexpected sight.The figure was tall, towering over him by a good half meter if not more, dressed in a formless, hooded robe of a rough spun dark brown cloth that hung in flaps and folds that hid any hint at body size and shape, falling in brown pools of cloth on the tile path. The hood hung low, obscuring in a dark shadow any hit of a face or features. Wufei went instinctively into a defensive crouch, sword coming up above his head in a silver arc to a position to defend from any move the taller form might make to attack him. "Who are you?" he demanded, trying hard to keep the panic that was almost fear out of his voice. He scolded himself for it instantly. Fear clouded the mind, made one slow to act. Fear killed the mind, and in so doing, often killed the person. He waited, sword blade unwavering, glowing a bloody silver in the light from the dying sun. The figure did not move to even so much as breath it seemed, nor did it speak. "Who are you?" He demanded louder, angry now at this silent thing that seemed to be his tormenter. His mind was racing, but kept coming back to the same thought. Oh my blessed Natal, help me find my way amongst this madness, he all but screamed in his mind. The figure was still without a voice, but it rewarded him with movement. From inside the folds and falls of brown cloth, a long arm extended, robe falling back to reveal a pale skinned hand. The hand was simultaneously human and very alien, with too many joints and far too many fingers, but its motion was one of command. The fingers curled inward on themselves towards the upturned palm, beckoning Wufei to follow. With out waiting to see if the Chinese pilot headed or understood the motion, the form turned fluidly, its robes moving like the dark brown waters of a swamp churned by the passing of an alligator, and began to walk away. Wufei stood from his crouch, and puzzled for a moment before following the long striding steps of the figure in the brown robe. Perhaps it would lead him to someone or someplace that would answer his questions, that would return him back to the mountains and his unguarded Gundam. He shuddered at the thought of Nataku in the hands of the enemy. Never would he allow such a thing. He moved swiftly to follow; sword still in hand and at the ready. There was no need to take chances.The figure in brown reached the intersection of white gravel and black slate, and turned perpendicular to the slate path to follow the white gravel. Catching up at last, the youngest son of the Chang clan moved to walk on the soft but stiff grass beside the path, mindful of bruised and already sore bare feet, a pace behind the swift, fluid steps of the tall form. Together, they walked, the only two signs of life in a place empty of both life and change, a place caught in some strange loop of time, beyond all reach or touch of its slowly defiling hands. Two living figures, separated by a cruel silver arc of steel held between them, moving to the unknown purpose of one, and the unthought purposes of the other, towards an unknown destination beyond the invisible horizon of the Garden of Forking Ways.Part Three: Where Snow Awaits Your VisitOn a plain unbound by a horizon rendered invisible in a slow gradient from the yellow green of the grass and trees to the pale pinks and oranges of the sky, two figures moved with purpose along an arrow shot path of white gravel. One walked with the boneless, formless fluidity of a creature more at home in the spirit than in the flesh, wrapped in a course homespun robe of brow cloth that only added to the figure's grace. Its flesh was invisible, hidden in the folds and falls of cloth that hooded the face and spilled luxuriantly onto the gravel into a graceful train of sackcloth, but its movements betrayed its lack of humanity in the ease of its too many jointed strides. Behind it, barefoot on the grass beside the path, the second figure struggled to keep up, its human clumsiness only made more obvious by the blade of drawn steel held out against an inanimate attacker, stained red by the light of an aged sun that hug low in the sky. Loose silk covered legs and torso, leaving the bronzed flesh of face, arms and feet exposed to the slowly frothing winds of the garden. The figure was beyond its element, grasping for purchase on a slope that had no rise or run, in a place where time ran in the shape of a sphere, but with more dimensions.Chang Wufei was beginning to tire. It was not the walking, nor was it the soreness of his feet, nor anything physical in of its self: it was the steady creeping strangeness of the day. He was in such an alien setting; surrounded by such alien sensations, that his mind refused to wrap itself around the idea that this was even happing to him. He was a skeptic to the core, but raised with a traditional sense of religious duty. And this place, and this thing, fit no where into anything that he understood in the workings of time or space. So he had attempted to do with it as he did most thins he could not accept: block out its existence in his mind. But he simply could not continue to block out the continuing strangeness of it all. The empty, looped garden that seemed strait from the Hells of his ancestors, the silent, multi-jointed mute with too many fingers, it was too much for any sane person to deal with, even him. It wearied him beyond his ability, beyond what the war, constant infighting, a lifetime of thin living, the death of Nataku, or anything else had been able to do to him. All he wanted was for things to make sense once more.Ahead of him, looming above the slender and towering form of his guide, a line of huge, gray stone statues had appeared in the distance, obviously large simply by the size prospective dictated them at this distance. Seven mammoth stone forms, each human, towered out of a stand of trees. The path had widened slightly, and began to be intersected at regular intervals by curved paths perpendicular to the white gravel, as though a spiral path were slowly tightening in on their destination. The statues were the first real sign of perspective Wufei had seen, and he was grateful for them, as nothing more than a sign of the normal functioning of nature. When the statues had begun to fill almost half the sky, something changed subtly in the world. It was not so much as passing into something, but passing out of it. There was suddenly time where there had been no time before, only the perpetual loop of the winds, and distance where there had been only the feeling of being trapped in the same loop of painted garden for eternity. At this transition, the grass became greener, and pairs of fanciful topiaries lined the lane. Everything was more alive, more real, than it had been before, and for all of this the Shenlong Gundam's pilot was infinitely relieved. His mute guide continued, pace never wavering, silent but for the burlap swish of the robes with every step. The landscaping slowly changed as they approached closer to the statues, with more bushes and topiaries, most of the old style white roses, and even grape arbors that spanned lazily above the path at regular intervals. There was more a sense of order, and of planning, a sense of human presence that had been lacking before. Despite this, Wufei and his silent, many-jointed guide were still the only signs of animal life in the garden. The trees became thicker, forming a high, green vault above the pathway. They were old hardwoods, Dutch Elms mainly, their dark green leaves ravishing the eye with their gloss and stealing the red sunlight like an old man's money, casting deep shadows. From the branches, tendrils of death gray Spanish moss hung like the hair of the demons the dragons chased away at the new years. Wufei almost paused at the mental relation. Both demons and dragons had been costumed performers, reenacting old traditions transplanted from Earth with the family. But in his memories from early childhood they seemed starkly real in this context, as though the surrealism of his environment had given credible life to the gray haired demons of his childhood. Perhaps, he thought as he watched the red glow slowly fade from the blade of his still drawn sword, turning the blade the same color as the moss, they are real after all, and I have only just now accepted it. The thought made him dip the blade of his sword ever so slightly. Again another change. As the vaulting formed by the branches of the trees grew thicker, blocking the sky from view all together, pairs of torches joined the edge of the path, just far enough from the edge to still allow Wufei an unobstructed line of grass to walk. The light was flickering and cool, as though electric, yet the flames were clearly visible. And then he saw the true source of the light, and felt the breath go out of his lungs as though he had been struck with a blow from a percussion riffle. From around the base of the trees, small globes of light, each no bigger than an insect moved, floating out into the path in swirls as though blown by the wind. They curled close to him and he saw inside their tiny lights, they were very tiny winged women. Each was different from the others, in face and dress, but all were very obviously of fine, old Chinese blood. They moved in careful swirls, lighting on the blade edge of his sword, curling close to his face. And they did the same to his guide, who seemed oblivious to the tiny, glowing women as they turned the folds of the brown robe into glowing rivers of light, outlining the form in a molten silver glow. And just as suddenly, they were gone, disappearing behind them as they walked in their same curling flights like dust motes filmed in reverse, falling back to the trees on silent, tinny wings of silver. Wufei stared in awe, and then found yet more to gape about as the trees parted with the suddenness of dawn in the desert. His guide had progressed out into a clearing, surrounding a stone dais of some sort, which was open to the sky. Dead seeming red light lit the place, and Wufei realized the clearing was lined on the far side by the bases of the statues he had seen before they entered the trees. But his dark eyes focused on the center of the dais, and did not leave there again. A podium of sorts was facing him, and standing at it was a figure dressed in an old, stained, brown robe, hood pulled to hide the eyes and face. Before the figure was a book, spread open in the middle of its thick expanse of pages. The figure looked at him, or more oriented its head towards him, and spoke."Chang Wufei, son of the honorable Chang clan, descendants of the Dragons of the Mountains, I bid you welcome to my realm." The voice was like the turning of old, dry velum pages, like the slow movements of desert sands across each other, dry and whispering, bold and commanding in the same. It was both the voice of an old and young man simultaneously, ageless and yet old as time its self. "Welcome," the figure that had been his mute and fluid guide said, "To the Garden of Forking Ways, the realm of my master"And in that alien place outside of time, the figure of the boy descended from the noblest blood of the Dragons of the Mountains stood with his sword raised to the one to whom no man could raise a sword. The boy faced unquavering and unknowing what brave men had crumbled to ruins when facing, faced what had destroyed nations and empires, entire families and peoples, mountain ranges and rivers, and entire suns and universes as unblinkingly as it had spawned the creation of the very same. Eyes cold and clear like the dark waters of the border rivers of the Mongolian highlands looked unwavering on the thing dreaded by emperors and common men alike for longer than there had been a difference between the two. Chang Wufei, pilot of the Shenlong Gundam, faced Destiny.Part Four: Yet You Make Your Solitary Retreat"Ah, such spine and sprit for one so young and fragile." The man in brown said. This man, this figure in brown on his dais of stone, turned his head down from the young boy before him to turn a page in the book before him. The wind rose and blew its hot breath through the trees, and something distant stirred, as though the turning of the page had been another step in the life of this green hell that had been named the Garden of Forking Ways. There was nothing about this place that felt right, nothing that was right, except to its master and creator, second eldest of the Endless, Destiny. Chang Wufei stood lest that a dozen yards from the second most powerful being in the known Universe, ignorant of what he faced, sword blade raised in challenge to the indignities he had suffered."Who are you?" the Chinese pilot demanded, dark eyes flashing in the clotted light of the invisible sun. "Who are you and why have you brought me where ever I am? What do you want from me!" The last came out pinched with an edge of panic and fear. He was loosing his grip on things once more, to the point of believing madness before believing what he saw."Ah. So full of questions, you are. How differently wonderful." The voice was like sand dunes dragging their weight across the seas of sand, moved only by the winds fierce whip. "And how deserving of answers too." The voice had become a whisper of dry paper. "I want nothing from you, son of the Chang clan, for there is nothing you could offer me that I have need of. I have been offered kingdoms and harems and every mineral you have ever thought of as valuable and then some, but none of it I have uses for. No, I do not want anything from you." Wufei's eyes hardened visibly. Everyone wants something, a rule he had learned long ago, and everyone had a price, even himself. "So untrusting, and rightly so. Summoned to a place outside mortal understanding, with none of your precious rhyme or reason." The papery voice smiled acidly. "Child, you do not realize what you are dealing with. I am Destiny, second eldest of the Endless, the personification of fate and order in this chaotic universe. I govern all action and inaction, and" the figure paused, and turned a page, head angled down to it for a moment to scan the page before returning to center on Wufei, "I govern the lives of every living thing, even their deaths. So put your toy sword away, boy, it can do me no harm.""How do I know you mean no harm to me." His muscles were beginning to cramp, held taunt and ready to spring. The tendons in his legs and back, weakened by their lack of use compared to his arms and torso, were beginning to scream with the strain of holding the burden of his other muscles. A loose strand of hair had found its way into his eyes, and was beginning to annoy him."Oh very well, boy. You have my word on my Great Book that no harm will come to you from either my servants or myself. You are, after all, a guest in my realm and at least deserving of that." Wufei waited a moment, then relaxed. With a practiced move, tense muscles gave way and fluidly returned the sword to its sheath at his waist in a melting of tension. His hand, however, still rested on the hilt, not close on it, but ready none the less. Trust did not come easy. Destiny gave a small sigh of annoyance, but was smiling beneath the shadow of his hood at the boy. Such spirit, and such spine, was a rare thing in a species that had the collective drive of sheep. The Chinese boy had straitened from his defensive crouch, and now stood rod strait looking up at Destiny, nobility oozing from every pore of his body like some coating slime."If you want nothing from me, and mean me no harm, why then am I here?" Wufei demanded. It was a fa