A/N: Hellooo…my first Dynasty Warriors fic. Yay for me :)
Disclaimer: Dynasty Warriors is property of Koei.
Note: This fic is based off the game and not the book. Oo, and expect this fic to be historically inaccurate.
Of Fools and Sages Made
Labored and slightly sluggish footsteps echoed down a hallway swallowed in darkness. The light that emanated from torches on the side of the walls only provided a small area where one can be bathed in the comforting brilliance of light, but it proved useless to the soldier patrolling the outward halls of the castle.
The stone length of the corridor acted as a natural amplifier, blowing up the steady, monotonous footsteps that he had been making on all day and night to monster size. It made them echo and re-echo until the low-ranked soldier thought that, between the cries and the very natural fear that he felt, he would go utterly and completely paranoid to the point of insanity.
Someone had left open the door open to the main courtyard that led to the wall with the main gate beyond. The wind moaned through the solid frame of the door and tiny living things rustled inside. The wind's ominous voice sent shivers through the lone watchman, and his mounting fear caused his hand to tremble. The light from the torch in his hand began to waver as he glanced around at his surroundings.
Plastering a small smile on his face and reassuring himself that this castle was the safest place to be in the warring world that enveloped him, he took this opportunity to step outside and away from the frightening hallway.
He continued to grin and walked a short distance to a tree with pink petals that reminded him of his little sister's blush, who was back home miles and miles away. Finally basked in the shy gaze of the moon that had hidden her face behind a silk veil of clouds, he laid his helmeted forehead against the coarse bark of the small but sturdy tree. Time passed. At some length he straightened, his smile gone.
He resumed patrolling the palace grounds with renewed vigor. However, his fear was still evident as the clutched the torch in his right hand so tensely that his knuckles were white.
The distant murmurs of his fellow watchmen soothed his foolish fear of the dark. He took hearty steps towards the sound of voices, the light from his torch for a moment catching a pair of emeralds, cat's eyes glistening warily from the shadows of Xing Cai's door. In the black cat's mouth was the small limp body of a mouse. At the sight of the torchlight leaving with the grinning, moonlike face peering up at the castle walls, the cat dropped its morsel and ran, crossing the doorway of Xing Cai's room.
The room was whirling, and then she was walking in corn that was rooted shallow in the earth but wide, lost in the corn that was silver with moonglow and black with shadow. She could hear the summer night wind rustling gently through it, she could smell its growing, wholly alive smell as she had smelled it all her long, long life. The wholesome scent reminded her of a certain young man wielding a sword as large as his self.
And yet she was afraid, ashamed of thinking of intimacies, because she was not alone. A dark man was with her, two rows to the right or left, trailing just behind or ranging just ahead. The dark man was here, his dusty boots digging into the meat of the soil and throwing it away in clouts, grinning in the night like a storm lamp.
The he spoke, for the first time he spoke aloud, and she could see his moon shadow, tall and hunched and grotesque, falling into the row she was walking. His voice was like the night wind that begins to moan through the old and flesh-adorned battlefield, like the very rattling of the breath of doomed soldiers as they seem to speak of their end. It was a soft voice. It was the voice of doom.
"I have his blood in my fists, Xing Cai. Pray that someone takes him away before he ever hears my feet coming up his steps."
Then she was awake, awake in the hour before dawn. Her thin body was shuddering helplessly, and every part of her ached for rest.
She surveyed her surroundings as she pondered what could have invoked the horrible nightmare she just had. There was no answer. There was only the light knocking of the early morning wind at the windowpanes, which were open and rattling. The sound of metal clashing upon metal drifted to her ears and told her that most of the other officers had already begun their day.
Her dark hair hung untidily about her face, and her dazed eyes peered out at the world like frightened mice peering out of a temporary bolthole. At last she got up and got dressed before going outside to see what the high morning had in store.
The training grounds were already occupied. Xing Cai absently observed the flag of Shu nearby, by the walls surrounding the castle. It stretched up to the clear blue sky like a monolith in a desert, a needle, a monument, and every bit magnificent. She felt elated at the prospect of seeing Shu's flag waved by villagers when – if – they ever returned as victors of the war of the Three Kingdoms.
It was one of the rare days when it seemed the world had stopped its spinning and came to a stop where everything made sense. The war had come to a stalemate, but for how long or brief, Xing Cai did not know. She expected it wouldn't be long. Lord Liu Bei was already working on war plans with Zhuge Liang tirelessly.
Xing Cai had been in a dream-like state since her last battle. She still had not adjusted to the aftereffects of a battlefield strewn with blood and bodies. Xing Cai was slowly approaching the resolve that she would fight for an era where every day was as peaceful as the one she was living at the moment.
She reckoned that anyone, looking back over her life, could pick out one year and call it the best. It seemed that, for everyone, there was one spell of seasons when everything came together, smooth and glorious and full of wonder. It was only later on that you might wonder why it had happened that way. You would be wishing that the good things which all befell in your one special year had spread themselves out a little more, that you could maybe take one of the golden things and kind of transplant it right down in the middle of a yearly stretch you couldn't remember a blessed good thing about.
Bright sparks captured her eye as Zhao Yun parried a spectacular blow from Huang Zhong. The metal of their weapons gave off the fire of the rising sun like an omen. Colored lights played over the sparring pair, making the metal of their weapons and armor purple, then yellow-orange, then red, then green.
"They seem to be having fun," a voice sounded over her right shoulder.
Xing Cai turned her head and gave a small nod at the sight of Guan Ping.
He gave her his trademark smile. "Would you be interested in a match before breakfast?"
"I agreed to help Lord Liu Chan train this morning. I don't know how long it will be before he arrives."
Obsidian-colored eyes wandered skyward for a moment as Guan Ping thought of something else to pass the time. "Then, how about a short walk around the grounds?"
Feeling a tiny smile tug at her lips at the lighthearted humor of her childhood friend, she gave a small nod and agreed to join him.
"Everything is so peaceful," Guan Ping mused after a long, but comfortable, silence. "It is different from what we're used to."
"I know what you mean," Xing Cai responded. It had always seemed that Guan Ping shared her same thoughts regarding war, and even life itself. "But it's a nice change. I hope it will be like this every day very soon, when Shu will rule over the land."
They passed the gardens on their way, where they paused for a while just to savor the beautiful sight of pink petals falling softly upon lush greenery. In the distance, she saw Guan Yu and her father, Zhang Fei, standing on the very same spot they had sworn brotherhood with Lord Liu Bei.
She looked at her father's back for a peaceful moment, just loving him. At this time of day the light took on a special quality that she loved, a timeless quality that belonged only to the most fleeting moments in the Shu gardens during early summer. She could think of that particular tone of light in the middle of snow-covered lands and it would make her heart ache fiercely. The light of an early summer afternoon as it slipped towards dark had so many good things wrapped up in it: training with Lord Liu Chan under the proud eyes of the other Shu officers; rivers; first blossoms; childhood.
Guan Ping cleared his throat a little. "It seems like they are a bit preoccupied at the moment. Shall we move on?"
They left on account of Zhang Fei running behind a clutter of bushes as he prepared to vomit, a result of the hangover he had from drinking copious amounts of wine the night before. Guan Yu patted Zhang Fei's back as the large man began to cough.
They passed by Jiang Wei discussing strategies with a smiling Yue Ying, who was always willing to offer advice to the eager student of Zhuge Liang. Xing Cai wondered what Yue Ying's next invention would be like, and how it would fare in battle.
When they were nearing the training grounds, a breeze blew and reminded Xing Cai of the nightmare she had. The scent of Guan Ping was disturbingly similar to the one she remembered in the field of crops in her dream. Xing Cai felt compelled to believe this omen concerned Guan Ping and the fate that would soon befall him. The message the dark man of left her with made her heart turn to stone.
"Guan Ping, there's something I need to tell you," Xing Cai began.
"What is it?" Guan Ping replied, his brow furrowed in worry at the urgency of her voice.
"It's…just that – "
"Xing Cai, I have been looking for you," a familiar voice sounded. The pair looked up to see Liu Chan, half-smiling, half-quizzical, with his bushy eyebrows cocked. Yet the overall impression Xing Cai took from him was one of great gravity. "Are you ready to train? Perhaps Guan Ping would be interested in joining us?"
Guan Ping shook his head, "Thank you for the offer, my lord, but I'd best be heading off to a meeting. I'll see you later, Xing Cai."
Guan Ping bowed to Liu Chan, and gave Xing Cai a nod before he left them in his wake. He thought he saw a gleam of desperation in her eyes.
She had let him go as she expected to meet him again later on. But the chance never presented itself. Later on that day, she learned that Guan Ping had already set off for Fan Castle.
He was gone before she knew it.
Meanwhile, the war that had pulled out of its stalemate pulled her in another direction, in another battlefield many, many endless miles away. As her own battle loomed ahead of her, she steeled herself for her duty as a warrior. Her nightmare was labeled as foolish and a figment of fervent nerves, and was carelessly brushed to the far depths of her mind.
Hardly knowing what he was doing, letting his feet pick their own path, Guan Ping staggered on the tiled walkway. His head dropped forward, his chin resting on his chest. He seemed to doze as he walked. And when his feet tripped over a body, when he fell forward and gave himself a bloody nose on the stone floor of the courtyard of Fan Castle, when he looked up and beheld what was there, he could hardly believe it. Blood ran from his nose to his worn armor. It was as if he was dozing and this was his dream.
Xing Cai was there, just out of reach.
He mustered the strength to get up and staggered towards her. His stagger became a trot. The trot became a run, the run a sprint, the sprint a mad dash. His scabbed knees rose, pistonlike, almost to his neck. A word began to fly out of his mouth, a long word like a paper streamer that rose to the sky, bringing people to the windows high above. The word was going to grow higher and shriller, long and longer as he approached her –
He went straight through. Stumbling and collapsing on the ground in a pitiful heap, he looked behind him and realized that Xing Cai was only a mirage.
Time passed, but Guan Ping did not know whether it was seconds, minutes, hours, or days. He was only faintly aware that the sky was a deep blood red when the sounds of Wu soldiers began approaching like a swarm of accursed locusts.
The sword that pierced him was like a crucifixion, but to him, it was bloodless.
Xing Cai approached Guan Ping's room warily. He would be inside where the curtains and shutters were drawn. But of course, she thought, there were still plenty of rooms where they were drawn. They were the rooms of the dead. When they got sick, they had drawn their curtains of the world. They had drawn them and died in privacy, like any animal in its last extremity prefers to do. The living – maybe in subconscious acknowledgement of that fact of death – threw their shutters and their curtains wide.
When she walked in and looked upon the still form of Guan Ping, she became suddenly convinced that the dark man from her nightmare was peeping at her from between the curtains, his hands opening and closing in a strangler's grip, his grin turned into a leer of hatred…His blood is in my fists.
A/N: Well, that pretty much sums it up for my first one-shot that turned out way longer than I expected. For those who are wondering, the "dark man" was death personified. Toodles.
Tsuki