AC: Round 3 - Inwuhou

[Revenant]

This thread is reserved for Inwuhou. The thread will open September 30th and will be closed after two weeks.

Good Luck!

[Inwuhou]

A summer's squall lashed out its fury against a verdant canopy, driving down rain thick and opaque as broth into the dark green sop. The branches swayed synchronously like drunken revelers in the grip of winds, their leaves whistling and rustling in a cacophony barely drowned out by the noise of heaven's faucets. The foam upon the turbulent sea appeared gray in the yellowish light, save for when a lightning stroke would illuminate, for a breathless moment, an expanse of white foam crazed onto the wine-dark sea.

The ancient plutons that made up the island's core, wrought by hundreds of centuries into myriad soaring spires that pierce clouds and canyons where shadows pool untouched by sun, stood impassively before the storm's horizontal deluge. Raindrops, each one fat as a trout egg, ricocheted off of the rocks and became a thick, white mist racing along in the wind. Now and again, a whistling noise like the keening of a grooved, spinning top would accompany a round, dark brown shape as it whirled through the slashing air and strike some stoic trunk with a wooden thump. Some of these would follow the flash floods in potentia into thin whirlpools, spiraling around and around again before draining into the new streams flowing through the mountain's gullies.

The black clouds were departing as swiftly as they had arrived, hurrying off to smite some richly deserving island off beyond the horizon. The faucets of the heavens silently spun down. The blasting winds slackened. In another half-hour, all that would be left will be broken branches, sogging puddles, burbling streams, and thousands of tree nuts scattered about the ground. Whatever melodramatic deity overseeing this performance had one more flourish for its final encore.

For a moment, white light lit the whole of the island as clear as day as a bolt of jagged lightning silently smote the highest peak. Then all was yellow darkness again, but for only another moment. The impossibly loud crash of thunder seemed to carry its own silence behind it, like an auditory afterimage. It traveled deep even into the rocks, a sharp crack and a long, deep rumble that rang the island like a bell and echoed throughout the endless tunnels and caves within the mountains.

Inwuhou woke.

Her latest transition had been considerate enough to leave her somewhere almost comfortable, if a little damp. The alcove had collected a thick layer of old fronds, branches, and other debris. These have turned into a soft bedding that smelled of earth, salt, and damp. It wasn't perfect, though; a tenderness in her back informed the nun that she had been poked continuously by something quite hard.

Inwuhou listened to the rumblings die away, the soundscape filling the hole with the rushing noises of a small waterfall.

Waterfall?

She opened her eyes - the fleshly ones - and stared. Then she stared some more, because there seemed to be nothing but a greenish darkness with nothing at all to focus on. She shifted her head a little and saw no change save that the darkness got a little less dark and a little more green.

The faintest trickle of panic, having long been oppressed under the iron boot of Inwuhou's discipline, wriggled free and swam up her spine. The scene, or rather non-scene, felt too familiar. It was like last time, when the vomitus of raging undead had dissolved her eyes into so much bloody pudding. What Inwuhou saw now was right similar to that faintly-lit, entirely imageless slate that she saw then, while her eyes were streaming down her face and dripping off of her chin.

There is no pain, this time. Why?

Like a child warned not to pick at a scab, Inwuhou reached up with one hand and gingerly felt for her face. Her groggy brain drove her hand like pedal-crane operator after two jugs of whiskey. A finger poked, hard.

Pain. There wasn't much of it, but it was there.

Inwuhou's mind reflexively sorted out and buried the pain and the surprise like kitty droppings, revealing another sensation that had been buried underneath. It was a wet, sliding kind of sensation, with a certain thickness and substance to it. It was like touching-

Her finger tentatively lurched forward again, then brushed across her face. The stuck-on leaf came off.

There was indeed a waterfall. It was as wide as a wagon and fell thirty feet straight down from the smooth-edged hole above to crash into the wide pool below. The pool itself, carved with infinite patience by the waters into the stone floor, roiled with a dozen eddies before flowing out in a thin stream through a tall crack in the walls. A weak shaft of light slanted in through the same hole to illuminate a patch of moss-grown wall.

Inwuhou sat up. Her cheek twitched at the sudden pain and subsequent relief in her back. A little digging in her bedding yielded a hard, round, brown nut; the culprit had probably left a permanent dent in her poor back by now. She experimentally squeezed it and determined she was not going to be able to extract recompense without breaking teeth.

She could, however, use her staff. Where was it?

It didn't seem to have to made it to bed with her, so Inwuhou stood to search. Halfway up, her keen martial artist's sense of space and distance expressed itself as a tickling on her scalp. Inwuhou froze instantly in that half-crouch half-squat. Slowly, she turned her face upwards and looked at the thing that she had been about to ram her head into.

It was her staff. Or, rather, it was about a third of her staff. It stood out perfectly horizontal from the cave wall, the rest of it fitting perfectly into a round hole apparently express-made for this purpose. Either someone has gone to quite some effort to bore out a hole to hold her staff for her, or someone had thrust her very blunt staff at the wall hard enough to create a new type of examination for royalty, one ranked above putting a sword into a stone, which in turn was ranked above pulling a sword from a stone.

Inwuhou's sea-green eyes flicked aside at a movement. There was a piece of paper tied to the end of the staff by a white string. On its face was a rust-colored word, written with broad strokes and a somewhat runny ink.

LEAVE

As she stared, a gentle breeze passed by. Her nose picked up the faint scent of iron from the paper. The paper turned gravely to show its other side. There was a wilting mayflower, each of its petals slashed in two, pinned there by a single golden needle. It was a familiar needle.

Inwuhou reached into her robe and felt about her bosom for the pouches, but had little doubt. The needle was one of hers.

On a strange impulse, the nun reached out and transferred the mutilated flower from the paper to the left breast of her robe. She stood the rest of the way, carefully avoiding braining herself on her own staff, and spent the next two minutes dusting all the leaves and twigs and other, less-identifiable bits off of herself. Then, facing out into the center of the room, she clasped her hands and bowed deeply.

"Your well-meaning words are received and this young nun thanks you with all sincerity. However, this small nun cannot help but to proceed onwards. This small nun hopes that your august self can understand and forgive."

The waterfall filled the ensuing silence. Inwuhou straightened, grasped her staff with both hands and yanked. It refused to budge. Another yank yielded nothing. She finally planted both of her feet firmly on the wall and, pretending that her staff was a horizontally-growing turnip, unfolded with all of her might. The staff suddenly came free with a hoarse scraping sound. Inwuhou's residual strength propelled her into a tumbling flight towards the pool.

Inwuhou's lips twitched. She had not managed to rid herself of this pleasure, though the teachers always underscored the importance of never taking pleasure in any training. She touched that little part of her that sliced the immensity of time into manageable chunks and thinned its strokes. Everything slowed. The roaring of the waterfall dropped into a subsonic rumble. In all this slowness, Inwuhou tucked her legs in, completed the somersault, and stomped on the rippled surface of the pool.

The water cratered like thick, dense syrup. Her foot started to sink in, but she had drawn it back already. Inwuhou released the tension on time. The rumbling waterfall rose back into a roar. She landed lightly on the pool's other shore, her bounding stomp having produced a spectacularly tall splash.

The staff seemed curiously unharmed by its passage through three feet of stone. It wasn't enchanted; the prevailing thought was that anything that wasn't slowed by a whack from five feet of solid oak was probably immune to magic, as well. The warning paper on the end flapped about sadly like an extremely cheap imitation tassel. In the brighter light on this side of the cave, it became apparent that the note had been written with someone's finger. She could see the ridges impressed into the end of a few strokes. It was crude but probably practical at the time.

Inwuhou followed the stream out, her cloth shoes leaving the faintest impressions on the moss mat.

[Inwuhou]

The crack in the stone through which the stream flowed soon narrowed so that the flowing waters sloshed knee-deep from one wall to the other. It was shaped like an elongated teardrop, rough above and smooth below. Whenever the light threatened to fail entirely and plunge Inwuhou into an impenetrable darkness, some faint glow or thin pencil of light would show itself. It was in this murky shadow that the nun shuffled, using her staff for support and slipping on the slimy film on the stone floor.

Perhaps ten minutes passed, perhaps it was an aeon. Inwuhou's feet were numb from the frigid water, her sodden robes felt like they were lined with lead beads. The crack had narrowed dangerously several times, but each time she was able to squeeze past with some effort. Now, it seemed that the end was near. Ahead, scattering off of the gray stone walls, was the gray glow of daylight, larger and brighter than any that she had seen yet.

Inwuhou turned a corner and came to a thin crack connecting her space to the outside. Past it, sunlight beckoned. With one mincing step after another, she approached the narrowing. The walls closed in around her and the water deepened. Her staff probed the floor ahead and abruptly found the floor dropping away. The water was at least waist-deep there, maybe even further ahead.

The first, tentative step found no ground; the deceptively swift waters caught her robes and tore her right off of her perch. The flow didn't carry her far before she became wedged into the crack, chest-deep in the water and her feet touching no ground. The impact likely left interestingly-shaped bruises.

Inwuhou braced her limbs and pushed back against the crack. Her body barely budged. The pressure of the oncoming water was like a perpetual hammerblow that held her fast against the stone.

Inwuhou squirmed and worked forwards. Her body barely budged. The stone had her in a vise-grip that did not squeeze but very definitely did not yield, either.

Her staff was gone, carried away into daylight without its bearer. She didn't need it to feel ahead, though. She could see the end of the narrowing. Three feet, maybe less, and then the walls belled out. The blinding, outside light blotted out everything past that. If only she could reach it.

Inwuhou exhaled deeply to collect herself. To her slight surprise, she slipped forward a few inches deeper into the crack. There was more pressure now; the walls against her chest and back forbid her lungs to expand again. Her feet still had no purchase, but given the length of the narrowing, the speed of the water, how long she could last without breath...

It was going to be now or never. Her body was starting to go numb from the cold water. Inwuhou panted a few times as best as she could, then exhaled totally. The water pressure immediately pushed her forward.

Six inches. One foot.

A thin ringing started up in Inwuhou's ears. Her body started complaining, but was vetoed.

A foot and a half. A foot and three-quarters.

Despite her best efforts at internal control, she could feel her pulse pounding frantically at her temples and behind her eyeballs. Speckles started dancing across her sight.

Then she stuck. Not one foot from the end of the narrowing, Inwuhou stuck solid, her lungs pressed empty, the water deep enough to rush just over her chin. She pushed forward with her hands, but nothing budged.

She was a cork in a bottle. Perhaps her skeleton would wash out with the water, once it's rotted enough. The temples taught that the body was just a crude shell to hold the luminous being of the spirit and to be discarded like old clothes, but Inwuhou still felt rather attached to her crude shell as of now.

She pushed again, hard. Nothing budged.

With her vision just a blot of shadows, with her blood screaming in protest and pounding in her head, Inwuhou made one last, valiant effort and thrashed with unconscious strength. There was a sharp pain that briefly overrode all the other sensations. She thought that she heard a complicated series of crunches and cracks, muffled as if from a long distance. Then she blacked out.

The nun, her ribs broken and her spine crushed flat, flowed limply through the mountain spring's outlet and slipped over the waterfall.

[Inwuhou]

Inwuhou recovered from her momentary blackout and found that she was falling. Her head still pounded and screamed for air, but her movement to draw breath brought a grating pain and no relief. The red haze of pain cleared a little, in time for her to remember a few important things like a crushed rib cage. For the first time, terror gripped her thoughts and those thoughts turned clear as crystal.

Her eyes stared at the wind-whipped strands of her hair flailing past, but they saw nothing. Inwuhou slipped her mind towards the past and tore it apart second by second until, very abruptly, her chest had never been damaged. The ragged end of the past stitched messily to the present and all the trauma of the last ten seconds blew away as tatters on the gale of time.

Reflexes drew a long-delayed breath of fresh air and beat back the suffocating blackness that had almost totally consumed her. Then she struck the water below.

The shock knocked a few bubbles loose, but Inwuhou held on tenaciously to the precious breath of air. The gray-green waters were cold and clear. A thick, scaly body slid past her belly and swam away. She didn't have the presence of mind to look; the momentum of her fall had carried her near the bottom of the pool and its appearance had gripped her sight as surely as the stones had previously gripped her chest.

Occasionally, one might find a skull, scapula, or other human bone in a pond. This pool was paved with them.

The greenish light rippled across the grayish femurs, skulls, ribs, and countless other bones. Some small part of Inwuhou's mind observed that some of the bones were broken, but the marrows had long been picked clean by something. As she slowly floated up and the bottom faded into a distant mosaic, she came face-to-face with that something.

The broad, whiskered face of a carp nudged Inwuhou's nose tentatively. The whiskers tickled her cheeks. That seemed to answer every question and it leisurely swam away.

Inwuhou breached and cleared her face of plastered-on hair. The shore was nearby and she reached it in a few gasping, thrashing strokes. She crawled a little distance over the long grass, laid down, and dozed off.

[Inwuhou]

It was the rain that woke Inwuhou. More precisely, it was the fairly abrupt cessation of rain. She had scarcely noticed the shower earlier, on account of having been immersed in altogether too much water to mind a few more drops. The warmth of real sun, undiminished by passage through thick clouds, caressed her face.

She sat up and politely gave the world a little while to stop spinning around and sort itself out. For the first time - or at least it seemed like the first time on account of her brain having been far too oxygen-starved and preoccupied previously - she took a good, slow look at where she was. It likely wasn't dangerous; otherwise she'd have been waking up in a different condition altogether.

It bore a superficial similarity to an extremely wide well. Jagged mountains rose high in every direction, their cracked, gray stone spottily overgrown with low bushes and short grass. The rough oval of sky was a bottomless blue marred only by lagging wisps of cirrus behind the departing squall. The driving wind bent and swayed the bushes growing above the rim, but at the bottom there were only faint breezes.

One such breeze playfully carried a little mist onto Inwuhou. The waterfall that produced the mist fell like a white, gathered curtain from the narrow cleft sixteen or eighteen feet up in the nearby cliff. The pool below it flowed over a few mossy stones and lazily wound further into the meadow. The water's surface was dotted with little pink boats - petals fallen from the blossoming peach trees that surrounded the pool, lined the stream, and generally were scattered all over.

As Inwuhou watched the progress of one such vessel, a silvery-white head faded into view from the depths, snapped it up, and sank away again. A solitary bubble remained for a while, then popped silently. That was enough to remind Inwuhou of what she had seen at the bottom and what her duty should be.

Her fingers found three twigs in the ground and stripped the linger flowers from them. Inwuhou stood, walked to the water's margin, and pushed the three sticks together into the saturated soil. She clasped her hands.

"The bowed head naturally cleanses the heart. The boundless, honored spirit of the world is naturally compassionate. The world after is clouded with and rains fragrance, flowers, treasures, and countless wonders. The fortunate and the propitious are all over the lands. Today I pursue the virtuous causes, the passage of the dead."

She should have been burning incense, but the wood was far too green to burn and she was sure that there wasn't an iota of dry tinder on her. The temple had often taught that it was the thought and the symbol that counted, but it's harder to get people to make donations for twigs.

"The benevolent thought in heart swears to rescue all sentients. The tin in hand shakes open hell's door. The bright pearl upon the palm illuminates a thousand years. The wisdom in head brings forth auspicious atmosphere. From great sorrow come great wishes. From great wisdom come great compassion. For the passed and about-to-pass alike, for the sinful and the virtuous alike, I absolve."

"May you behold the iridescent clouds of perfection, of compassion, of wisdom, of protection, and of praise. May you hear the wonderful sounds of patience, of discipline, of boundless energy, of benevolence, of joy, and of release. Should all the things in a thousand world be made into deserts and every grain of sand be made into an aeon of sublime happiness, they would still not equal one-thousandth of that which your transcended soul receives."

"The evils that have befallen you in your last world are forgotten. The evils that you have committed in your last world are forgiven. The worries carried for you are forsaken. The worries that you carry are forcut."

The sweet-smelling winds carried her words over the speckled waters and gently bounced them off of the mountains. Inwuhou carried on through the remainder of the Greater Prayer for Transcendence, skipping, for obvious reasons, the canonical ending of scattering the ashes of the burnt incense into the wind.

The satisfied, warm feeling of a good deed well done stayed with Inwuhou all through her journey along the stream. It wasn't a very long journey, since she found what she was looking for in a few minutes of strolling and what she was probably looking for almost immediately. What she was looking for was her staff. What she was probably looking for was the dwelling of the landscaper or at least resident; this was something required to exist on account of the elegantly-carved wooden bridges crossing the stream in several places.

Inwuhou found her staff floating lazily midstream, caught up against a small stand of reeds. It looked none the worse for wear; going over a waterfall was probably nothing to a device that had survived being thrust into solid rock. Getting to it without making her newly-dried robes rather heavier and uncomfortably clingy was a question of careful planning. Inwuhou jumped.

By the time that she was falling into the stream next to the staff, time had again slowed to a thin-sliced crawl. She untucked her right leg and aimed an expertly-judged kick at the staff. She untucked her left leg and stomped hard on the water's surface, again suppressing a smile at the crater-splash that appeared with glacial slowness.

Inwuhou landed gently on the opposite shore and released her grip on the deli slicer of time. When the whirling noise got louder, she stretched out a open hand. The staff smacked into her palm rather harder than imagined, a little higher than intended, and as a result nearly bashed her head in. It would have been the one thing more embarrassing than landing on and slipping on one of the tree nuts scattered all over the ground.

Duly re-equipped, Inwuhou turned to face the thing that she was probably looking for. It was hard to miss; the mansion loomed matriarchally over all the trees like a particularly promiscuous anglerfish. It was a complicated-looking thing: all round pillars, flat plaster walls, curving roofs, and squared windows. Where it wasn't whitewashed, it was painted a dark crimson. Its age showed in the occasional bit of peeling paint.

An uneasiness settled in Inwuhou, who had learned some of the skills of reading a house during her rotations doing alms-begging in the towns at the foot of the temple. This place was missing all of the things that made a house into a home: laundry lines, houseplants, water buckets, and the other miscellanea of residence. It looked like one of those "architect's impression" woodcuts that real-estate agents used in brochures. A haunted, abandoned house would have been better; at least then there would have been some assurance that the place had once been a place where things had happened, rather than built and immediately forgotten.

Inwuhou walked over one last bridge and onto the stone-paved path towards the house. The strained creaking of the wood underfoot drew a few curious carp up to the surface of the stream, hoping that there would be breadcrumbs or buns. She navigated the last and only two stone steps before the door and stopped. It was an impressively-built door with an immense brass knocker wrought in the same of a lion's head and images of leafy vines embossed all over. Inwuhou considering the dilemma between breaking-and-entering and knocking. She was good at knocking; one didn't go about soliciting donations without mastering this first, vital step.

Inwuhou raised her right hand and caught a dart.

By the time that she had turned around to see who had shot at her from behind, she had already dashed several steps to the side to foil follow-up attacks, which never came. Her eyes caught a flicker of color, a pair of cold blue eyes, in the dwarf tea trees besides the path. Then she had bounded off of the landing and was soaring through the air after her probable assailant, whose passage could only be followed now by the whispering of the leaves.

Five minutes later, Inwuhou admitted that she had lost her quarry. It seemed impossible; there was nothing but separated stands of shrubs and trees in every direction. Yet her foe had vanished without a trace. As she walked back towards the door, she held up the dart. It was a gleaming sliver of metal and a tassel of thin red threads. The tip glinted blue, as if there was an oily coating upon it.

She brought it closer and took a sniff. There was the faint, bitter scent of ashwort, for which the medicinal texts said: "Of the ashwort and its roots, they are a cruel and peerless poison. If its juices should touch blood, it should turn the blood into a black liquid that rots the flesh and spreads in the veins. Should the blackness touch the heart, then the person is lost. Do not delay in sacrificing the limb to preserve the life, for there is no remedy."

The dart was carefully pressed into the soil until none of it remained.

Inwuhou straightened before the door, nestled her staff in the crook of her arm, and clasped her hands. It was about the tournament. She clearly wasn't welcome here, moreso than at any other house that she had preached at, but there was nothing for it but to press onwards. Of course, if it wasn't during the tournament, then she would have tried to press on anyway, if only to make pointed inquiries as to why there was a fish pond being used as an undignified mass grave. Either way, she was going to have to be rude. Rudeness didn't come without guilt.

"Your well-meaning dart is received and this young nun thanks you with all sincerity. However, this small nun cannot help but to proceed onwards. This small nun hopes that your august self can understand and forgive."

Inwuhou raised her right hand and missed the knocker.

The great door swung inwards of its own accord, without the tormented squealing of old wood. Instead, there was the rasping of barely-oiled iron hinges followed by a dull thump as the door hit the limits of travel. After a few seconds, Inwuhou relaxed from her sudden guard stance and took a better look at the interior.

It was an airy room with a ceiling high overhead. It was ordinarily well-lit from four skylights but was now extraordinarily well-lit from two broken skylights. The shards of glass were piled in a large wooden dustpan to one side, along with several of those ubiquitous nuts that were apparently the window-breaking culprits. There was a tea-table and two chairs besides it, all of them in red sandalwood. The four thick, round pillars that rose around the room towards the ceiling were painted in the same red as parts of the exterior, though these were much better preserved. There were apparently no other doors.

"Blessings be upon this house." Inwuhou said as she stepped over the threshold and slowly proceeded into the foyer. She lightly touched a hand to the broom leaning against the wall; the handle was still warm.

[Inwuhou]

An hour later, Inwuhou had made no further discoveries about the foyer-that-didn't-go-anywhere. She had circled the room four times, gently tapping her staff against the walls to look for secret doors because there was always supposed to be a secret door. Nothing. She had walked twice over every square inch of the floor, tapping her staff on the stone tiles and listening for secret trapdoors, too. Nothing.

Presently, an entirely different kind of nothing came to the forefront of her thoughts. She had eaten nothing for more than two days now. Hunger only made the faintest complaints, years of frequent fasting had oppressed those nerves like an opera-loving tyrant oppresses street mimes. On a more practical level, she was aware that fasting while sitting motionless in meditation for enlightenment and fasting while engaged in physically exhausting strolls in pretty gardens for a tournament were two entirely different propositions. Her eyes fell on the nuts.

It was simple to pick them out of the broken glass and brush off the little bits of broken glass. Her knife slipped uselessly off of the shells, so Inwuhou made good use of her staff as a hammer and the table as an anvil. One solid whack crushed the first nut and afterwards it was just a matter of picking out the fragrant inside bits from the debris. A test for poison with one of her silver needles came out clean. They had a bitter bite at onset but the taste quickly evolved into an unctuous feel and finished with a lingering sweetness.

The attack on the third nut went offsides. There was a popping noise as the uncracked nut sailed off of the table and thunked hollowly against a pillar. Inwuhou froze for a second, then recovered the nut from the far corner, cracked it properly, and ate thoughtfully. Then she ate the last two nuts and sat in meditation for digestive purposes. After a half-hour had passed and Inwuhou was certain that her stomach had no quarrel with the food, she stood and went to the pillar.

Now that she was getting a closer look, she could see where the seams probably were, along with tiny pinpricks of holes that were probably for looking out. Inwuhou tapped hollowly on the wood with her staff and a stiletto punched right through the thin stuff at her peering eyes.

Halfway through Inwuhou's backwards somersault, half of the column was persuaded by a foot to forcefully eject itself from the other half and whirl through the air at the nun. A <The Sage Points Out The Path> deflected it, but the recoil through her staff was sufficient to destabilize her somersault and drop her heavily onto the stone floor.

The burly, hirsute, black-haired man stormed out of his hiding-place, his blue eyes glittering with mania. He was richly dressed in red and purple, but the thoughts of his robes were overriden by the thoughts of the stiletto in his left hand. That, in turn, were driven to second place by the thoughts of the black-iron cudgel in his right. He closed the distance with four lunging steps and brought a <Hermit Cleaves the Mountain> down at her.

Four steps was plenty of time for Inwuhou to refocused her wits. <Ancient Tree Circles Roots> lashed out, her staff a great deal longer than his foot-long iron, and he danced aside to preserve his ankles. That was enough clearance for Inwuhou to <Inverse Phoenix> and handspring to her feet in a flurry of robes.

"Honored sir-" She swallowed the rest of her question in favor of swaying away from his <Black Tiger Steals Heart>. It was a dull, simple thrust at the chest, but that wasn't the point of the move. The point laid in the stiletto's <Underworld Betrays Heaven> silently striking at her knee.

The secret door crashed into the floor, its sounds masking the hiss of steel through cloth. Inwuhou checked her balance with the <Rooster Stance> that had dodged the stiletto, breathed, and lashed out with <Sixteen Chained Shadows>. Her staff provided the only support on the ground as her two legs pumped out sixteen kicks, each one fast as the shadow of the preceding one, aimed at the blue-eye'd man's sternum, floating ribs, throat, chin, nose, temple, and ears.

He backed away out of reach, the first four kicks landing heavily on his <Heaven-Supporting Pillar> and bruising the muscular, blocking arm. The man grunted and limbered his right arm then took another step back to avoid her staff's <Whirlwind Over Desert>.

"Honored sir, this small-" Inwuhou's question got a little further this time before <Jet Dragon Stirs the Sea> crushed in at her waist. Her staff sprung up and stabbed at the inside of the offending wrist. Though he wrenched his club swing to a stop, she was unable to land her attack because the stiletto swept in and deflected her staff.

She barely had time to exchange another breath before he closed again. His technique had changed, leading with the blade and holding the club on guard. The point danced across eight positions to threaten her brow, throat, or heart. Inwuhou tentatively thrust <Single Sunbeam> at his chest. As expected, his club's <Three Brothers Beat Drums> seized the tip of her staff and bound it while the stiletto point lept forward for her brow.

Inwuhou dropped her staff and her hands flicked out. The knife edges of <Lotus on the Water> struck the stiletto-holding hand in the wrist and on the thumb. The deflected blade passed by Inwuhou's ear and felled two strands of hair.

Her staff reached the level of her knees and her right leg snapped out the second half of <Clouds Flow Under Mountain>. It was unorthodox to use a weapon for this, but she needed the reach against such a large man. Inwuhou's hands carried out the first half of <Clouds Flow Under Mountain> and closed like a vise around the hairy wrist of the stiletto-holding hand.

The dull thud of the staff smashing into the man's gut stopped his iron club before it started its stab. He exhaled forcefully, bringing the smell of jasmine-scented cologne to Inwuhou's face. The slight, all-body spasm was all she needed to open up his hand with <Wisdom Snatches Void>. The stiletto skittered along the floor until it bumped up against a distant wall.

The nun flipped through another <Inverse Phoenix>, this time as the full somersault rather than recovering from her back. Her assailant had already regained his breath and was raising his cudgel to guard. Good.

<Goddess Scatters Flowers> benefitted greatly from being used with a History Nun's Walk Between Ripples. A second, thinly sliced, could fill the span of eternity. Inwuhou was only skilled enough to stretch the time to four seconds, but that was more than enough. In that single second, she methodically drew and threw handfuls of silver needles six times.

The man's eyes widened, his first expression other than outright anger and pain. The air was filled with speeding slivers of metal. His arms pumped through three <Wild Dragon Seals Pass>, guarding his eyes and throat. Eight heavy needles waved from the back of his hands, from his arms, and from his chest.

The club clanged on the stone floor.

Inwuhou strode forward and tapped her foot on her staff. In reaction, it lept off of the floor and completed one rotation before landing neatly in her waiting hand. She bowed.

"Honored sir, this small nun means you no quarrel. This small nun again apologizes for the intrusion into your home and for the hurt that this small nun has inflicted. If honored sir would please extinguish his anger, this small nun will tend to the wounds immediately."

He stared at her bowed head for some time. An experimental flex of his arms revealed a disturbing numbness and softness; the needles had been expertly embedded into nerves. There was an unease and weakness when he drew breath. He broke the silence by spitting.

"You, who has stepped foot in the sacred and forbidden Luminous Top, are already dead." The basso voice was loud, but lacked the substance and lung power behind it to be called booming. Inwuhou suspected that this was a very recent development. "Your bones will never return to their home. Your home will be found by our loyal followers. Your family will all be put to the torch."

"This small nun has no family, honored sir. This small nun had no idea of the sanctity of your home and begs your forgiveness for it. With your forgiveness this small nun only seeks a certain object here."

"You've eaten a leopard's gall, or bear's liver, haven't you? Your bravery is only stupidity. Take something from the Luminous Top? It is blasphemy. The only thing you'll receive is death."

Inwuhou was still thinking of how she could soothe the anger and make up for the trespass when the man spat again and lept for the hollow pillar. He stamped on some part of it and the bottom fell out, dropping him into darkness.

There was no time to collect her needles if she was going to follow him; she'll just have to hope that the remaining set would be enough. Inwuhou hopped down into the smooth-sided chute.

[Inwuhou]

The trip had taken a handful of seconds and added another layer of grime to Inwuhou's robes. Reflections on how she now had the authentic look of a wandering nun were batted aside by the need to land neatly on her feet at the end, which she did. Then both of Inwuhou's feet promptly slipped out from under her and she landed heavily on her back.

It was cold as an icehouse and pitch-dark. This observation seemed rather stupid a moment later when she noted that the floor that her cheek was resting against was covered in a thin, uneven layer of ice. The place probably was an icehouse. Now, if only she could hear where the blue-eyed man had gone to.

The clacking of a heavy bolt sliding into place simultaneously answered the latest question and told her where the door was. Inwuhou dragged herself to her feet with the help of her staff, barked her shins twice feeling her way past the ice blocks towards the door, and reached out.

It was iron cladding over wood and sounded very thick. The bolt was probably on the outside, as the inside of it felt as featureless as a dinnerplate. A muffled, gleeful yelling came through the door when she knocked on it with her staff.

"Just lay down and freeze to death! It's better than you deserve! Don't worry, I'll come back tomorrow and throw your corpse to the sacred carp!"

Five minutes later, Inwuhou was convinced that the man had simply left. After all, he wasn't deaf and she's spent the last five minutes extolling the virtues of leading a nonviolent life of no killing quite loudly at the door. The frigid air was getting to her, so she decided to try violence. Violence had the added benefit of warming the body.

Fifteen minutes later, Inwuhou was done being violent at the door. Her fingers could feel innumerable dents on the door, left by various parts of her or her staff. They were just that, dents, and totalled up to no appreciable progress towards actually getting through the door. The bolts and hinges were holding perfectly solidly against the assault. As she stood there going automatically through breathing exercises, a thought struck her: the bolt was right outside, through the crack of the door. Inwuhou slipped her knife out of its sheathe.

Thirty minutes later, Inwuhou was done picking at the bolt. She could barely reach it with her knife. It felt and sounded like solid iron and stayed stubbornly immobile no matter how she worked at it. Her fingers had gone numb already. She sighed, sheathed her knife, and pulled down a bundle of straw to sit on.

Well, this was an unexpected way to die, frozen in an icehouse. Inwuhou crossed her legs and settled in for meditation; it was the only suitable way to spend her last hours. The body was simply a fleshly shell and the luminous being of the spirit transcended to sublime and infinite wisdom. She believed all of these things with a conviction as unshakeable as the sun. There was no fear, there was acceptance. There was no worry, there was peace.

It was at this time that Inwuhou noticed that there were two people breathing in the darkness.

She back wrenched her mind, lethargic from the cold, and listened. Then she stood and walked very slowly in the direction of the other breathing until her probing staff came to rest against something. To her probing fingers, it felt like a man. He was rather smaller than the blue-eyed man and his skin felt icy to the touch. Yet still, he breathed.

An immortal line from the scriptures floated in Inwuhou's memory: "If I do not enter hell, then who enters hell?"

First, he needed to be off of the floor. Inwuhou prised more straw off of the ice blocks and made a passable nest against one corner. She half-dragged, half-rolled him into a sitting position against the insulated wall. It was the work of a few minutes to wrap herself around the man. She sat in his lap for time beyond her own counting, feeling each thread of her heat being siphoned away by his body and feeling the glacially slow beating of his heart. The chattering of her teeth mixed discordantly with the sound of his thready breathing. Inwuhou had expected the man-smell to fill her nose, but in the cold, there was nothing.

At last, there was a stirring. The man's breathing changed. His lips moved.

"... dead." He muttered.

"P-P-Pardon?" Inwuhou asked, unable to fight back the shivering.

"Why ... hell ... so cold?" He was past shivering.

"Y-You're n-n-... n-not in h-h-hell-l."

There was the soft cracking and tinkling of tiny, broken ice crystals as his eyes opened. At least, it sounded like it came from the region of his eyes.

"... where?" He whispered.

"Ic-c-e-hous-s-e."

There was a long silence, hopefully as the man battered his brain into some semblance of original function. Inwuhou hoped that perhaps - no, that was stupid. If the man knew how to get out of the icehouse then he would have already. Regardless, the longer that she could prolong his life, the better. If he could stand up and help push on the door, perhaps? Some small part of her mind hinted that she already knew how to escape, but another subconscious terror violently squashed the thought.

"Who?"

"Th-s-s-s s-s-sm... Inw-wu-hou."

Another long silence followed. Unexpectedly, Inwuhou felt her body warming up all over. The heat was incredible and she wanted nothing better to get out of these stifling clothes. Yet she didn't want to let go of the man, he was warmer than anything else- Inwuhou's discipline weakly kicked her in the head and forced disturbing recognition that her thoughts were coming apart and wandering in every direction.

"You... I know. Why?"

"S-s-saving you... us. "

"There... is no escape... from the icehouse." He wheezed for a bit, "The door will be locked... until our frozen... corpses are dragged... out."

That much Inwuhou already suspected, but the hopeless acceptance in the man's words sparked something. In her subconscious, the terror of not being in control was wrestled aside by the burning imperative to do whatever was in her power to save and enlighten innocents. With the pressure released, a previously squashed thought sprung free and presented its significantly retarded message.

The blue-eyed man had been through here, a few hours ago. The door had been open, a few hours ago.

"Can you s-stand?" It really was very warm. Even her shivering had stopped. How did they even keep ice in such a roasting place?

"Maybe... bother?"

"We're... going to get... out." Inwuhou stood. Or, rather, she tried to stand, but the man's arms wrapped around her didn't budge.

"... crazy. There is... no out. Just... enjoy the last... minutes." "I... tried to warn ... you. The... Hierarch killed me... but you... would be safe. You... safe. Didn't listen."

The image of a scrap of paper and the word LEAVE drifted lazily across Inwuhou's memory.

"You.. didn't leave. Now... you're here too." His cold fingers moved with no strength behind them and felt out her face, "At least... together."

The cold must have gotten into the man's head, Inwuhou decided, he was blithering nonsense. With one more struggle, she freed herself from his arms and stood, the blast of cold air and the sudden absence of his warmth doing little to combat the hotness that suffused her.

Inwuhou opened her historical eye.

She remembered what it was like to be set adrift in all the vastness of history, blown randomly here and there and sensing only glimpses of unconnected scenes. Having her fleshly eyes open prevented barking her shin in the present but only worsened the migraine and disorientation of sensing two separate things at once. A detached retina in the historical eye was not unheard of among the Wuji nuns; it was an uncommon injury that required temporal surgery and rest to heal. The memories of it crystallized the terror that Inwuhou had first felt when she heard of the condition.

Now, she had no choice. It was no bother if she was going to freeze to death and shed this stinking leathery shell. It was another matter entirely if she was going to allow her own inaction to cost the life of another. For this, she must re-open her eyes, wrest control of her eye, and find a way to defeat that lock. Inwuhou braced for nausea as the first past sensations flooded in.

"... right. Injuries... healed... after each round." Inwuhou breathed to herself. The sounds, sights, smells, tastes, and touches were perfectly coherent and perfectly under her control.

There was no time to beat herself about the head for gross stupidity. The nun delved back several hours until she saw the blue-eyed man fall from the chute; darkness was no obstacle to history sight. She watched as he, too, slipped and fell on his behind. The man scrambled up with some effort, shoved the thick icehouse door open, and stumbled through it. As Inwuhou entered, he shut the door and slammed the bolt shut.

Why was the icehouse door unlocked?

Inwuhou stepped further back in time, hours more. The bolt was pulled back and the blue-eyed man opened the door, close the door, and started climbing up the chute, his shoes making an odd metallic noise as they somehow found purchase on the smooth surface. After that, he-

Inwuhou restrained her curiosity and dragged herself back to the nearer past. She watched the blue-eyed man lock the door again, then reached back with the mind's scissors and snipped those two seconds free of the timeline. A moment's work with the mind's sewing kit stitched the two loose ends together. The change propagated instantaneously to the present, arriving well before she reeled her historical eye back to a point a hair's breadth behind the present.

The never-relocked door swung open under a firm push. Outside was a sunlit corridor and a room full of straw mats. Inwuhou beat some strength into her numb limbs, sufficient to drag the again-insensate man into the straw. He had a short, wispy beard and was built athletically, but Inwuhou made little notice of his handsomeness while focusing on the extent of his blackening injuries. The summer air outside was warming up those limbs, but if his frostbites went untreated, gangrene would certainly set in. She unsheathed her knife.

Approaching footsteps, humming, and clinking of porcelain alerted Inwuhou into aborting the surgery. She across at the closed-but-unlocked icehouse door, closed her eyes, reached back in history, and snipped out the blue-eyed man's unlocking of the door. About the same time that she finished secreting herself and her companion back towards the straw, the blue-eyed man reappeared.

He sat down on a straw mat, oblivious to the two hiding behind him. He poured some wine from the jug that he had in one hand into the bowl that he had in the other, drained the bowl in one gulp, and started saluting the door with the empty vessel.

"Are you dead yet, little nun? How about you, Wemer? Did you like the present I left with you? It's one that you can take into hell with you!"

Pour, gulp. Inwuhou glanced back at the sleeping Wemer, then silently sheathed her knife.

"Your lips are probably frozen shut, aren't they? Well, let me tell you about your idiot lover, little nun. Maybe then you two can be married in hell. Get tortured together by howling fiends. Romantic!"

Pour, gulp.

"Wemer, you've killed more people than fills a canyon, how low you were struck! The Hierarch tells you to go kill the intruder, like with all intruders on the Luminous Top. You take one look at her face and you betray our Hierarch and our Church. Poor choice. Poor choice."

Pour, gulp.

"But no, you've been loyal and useful! It's the icehouse for you, not the Viper Pit. Great is our Hierarch's mercy! It's fate that you two should die to-" The man's raving commentary cut off with a choked scream. Inwuhou had ambushed him from behind, grabbing each of his arms in turn and expertly popping them free of their respective shoulders. He lept forward to get out of her grasp, overbalanced, and stumbled face-first into the freezer walls. The jug and bowl shattered against the stone floor.

"This small nun apologizes for causing you pain. If you would please lead the way to the Hierarch, this small nun will mend your shoulders immediately."

The blue-eyed man glowered back at her impotently. Finally, he gritted his teeth and answered, "If you want to die so much, so be it!"

Wemer had stirred to consciousness after the fracas. He slowly levered himself sitting and stared wide-eyed at Inwuhou. "You. I thought, I thought you were a dream."

"This small nun apologizes for causing you trouble." Inwuhou turned and bowed to him, "This small nun will do what she can to make amends."

"Make amends?"

The blue-eyed man grunted as Inwuhou popped his last shoulder in. He flexed his arms; they functioned, but were damnably weak from both this and the needles earlier. "She's going to to Hierarch, Wemer, to plead for your life. Whatever is it that you do to make the girls fall for you?"

"You're not seriously taking her, Dugan! Why?"

"To ask for your pardon." Inwuhou said, stepping to Wemer and supporting him as he stumbled his way over the straw and to his feet.

"And... yours?"

"That's not important."

"No! You can still run! The Hierarch will kill you!"

"Both of you are dead anyway. None can permanently escape the Hierarch's justice. The Church will find you, you know." Dugan added gleefully. He ducked away from Wemer's slow, jerky punch, which Inwuhou caught.

"Peace, honored sir." Inwuhou gently lowered her hand, "This man means no harm."

"It's not too late. We can kill him and then flee. Off of the Luminous Top. Off of the island. To the far corners of the sea where the Church will never find us!"

"Please do not kill, for it tarnishes the spirit."

"The Hierarch is invincible! You'll die!"

"It is not important."

"You're important to me!"

Inwuhou entirely failed to react. "Please lead on, honored Dugan."

[Inwuhou]

A covered walkway bisected the central courtyard as an open-sided tunnel through a flowering paradise. The petrichor that had vied for dominance with the fragrance of peach blossoms outside now provided little more than an undertone to the local bouquet. From the jade-green sea of grass rose countless skerries of camellias, each one a riot of colors. No two shrubs were alike, Inwuhou could just barely recognize a few of them: black-rimmed blood-red petals of Black Moonlight Cup, red double-flower of Loyalty of Noble Blood, white-speckled red of Snow-Speckled Marshall, the pure white spiral of South Sea Pearl...

The two growths flanking the centre of the walkway were legendary and made even Inwuhou pause to stare, if only for a moment: the eighteen different colored flowers of the Eighteen Scholars and the precisely sized and colored flowers of Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea.

Her gaze was noticed. Dugan smirked, "The Hierarch's excellence in everything is legendary." He turned back to Inwuhou, who had Wemer's arm over her shoulder and passing his increasingly desperate words in one ear and out the other. "Perhaps, if you justly praise the Hierarch, you will receive a quick and relatively painless death."

"Shut up, Dugan. I fought alongside the Hierarch during the Election. Where were you, you snivelling syncophant? Hiding underneath some turtle? You've been poisoning the Hierarch's opinions these last three years. Even holding court on the Hierarch's behalf."

"The Hierarch's wisdom is infinite. I was granted authority to act in the Hierarch's stead. I have the Hierarch's absolute trust."

Wemer spat, but nothing came out, "Like hell. If it was anyone else, I'd say that you've hidden the corpse. The Hierarch hasn't held audience with anyone except you for three years. Nobody else dares questions you, but I'm not some coward."

"Oh, yes, not a coward. Just a lustful traitor, a dead man walking, a-"

"Please, honored sirs. You are both injured and argumentation would be detrimental your recovery. Please open the door,"

The door in question at the end of the walkway was framed in jasmine and the panels were decorated with scenes of blue mountains wreathed in clouds, tranquil ponds beneath willows, and rocky shorelines splashed by waves. The themes were similar to the painted carvings that adorned the ceiling of the open-sided walkway. On the right frame of the door were painted the golden words: "One sword frosts winter over fourty provinces". On the left side was the bottom half of the couplet: "Ten thousand flowers redden spring in one home"

Inwuhou nodded inwardly in understanding: the blue-eyed man had seized power in his cult after the Hierarch started withdrawing from the daily affairs. The Hierarch, formerly a great man and benevolent ruler, must have found love and was drunken in happiness with his wife. It was just like the instructors had described of how love's nettle can injure even with the best intentions; that was why Wuji nuns were expected to swing the sword of wisdom and sever the worldly threads of desire and lust.

The door whispered open silently under Dugan's hands. Inside was a beautifully-decorated little foyer, heavy on the red, pink, and gold. The red sandalwood furniture was intricately carved with images of leaves, vines, and flowers. A pair of extinguished, half-burnt red wax candles stood on the lone table in front of a small painting of a richly-dressed, elegant woman. The smell of perfumes was thick in the air.

The next room was separated by a red silk curtain. Dugan stepped in front of it, cleared his throat, and called out, "Hierarch! There is someone here to see you!"

A man's voice, pinched into a breathy falsetto that sent an involuntary shiver down Inwuhou's spine, answered, "Who is it? Other than you, I don't want to see anyone!"

"The old traitor, Dugan Trihn, and that outside trespasser, Inwuhou."

Dugan threw off Inwuhou's supporting arm and shoulders and half-sprinted, half-lurched through the curtain, stifling a grunt. Inwuhou flowed in after him.

The innermost room was like that of a young girl's, but the dominating feature was the person seated on the red-and-pink bed. That person was dressed in a flowery gown, the narrow skirt accentuated on one side by a bow sash. His clean-shaven, handsome face was rosy with expertly applied lipstick, blush, and other makeup. His right hand daintily held a tiny sewing needle; his left hand held the lace-piece that he had been working on.

Dugan gaped, "Hierarch?"

He carefully laid down his workpiece, stood up, and smoothed his skirt before replying. "Yes, Dugan. My old friend." The falsetto came naturally, without the slightest hint of concentration,

"You remember me, then? Did you have me executed? What happened between us, that you would hate me so?"

The Hierarch gave a quiet sigh, "I remember you well. I remember when you fought at my side against Taamath the pretender, when together we descended on his fortress in the depth of night and opened the gates for our loyal followers. You have always been a good friend. Even in the depths of the second winter, when many deserted, you never wavered by my side."

"Then... what happened? Why? If you would have me die, then I will do it myself, but at least let me die knowing why!"

The sound of footsteps behind Inwuhou alerted her to Dugan's entrance. She warily stepped to one side to keep him in front of her, as well.

"After the disaster at the River Sactuary, you were the only one who believed in me and remained by my side.. I am very indebted to you, my friend. My sworn-brother. But you should not have upset my husband."

Inwuhou blinked. There had been something like an optical illusion, as if the Hierarch was momentarily in two places at once: standing in front of his bed and standing in front of Wemer. Yet after she blinked, the Hierarch was standing there, placid-looking as always, in front of the bed.

With a wheezing groan, Wemer slowly sank to his knees and fell over onto his face. He twitched once and then moved no more. Inwuhou sighed, put her hands together, bowed her head, and whispered, "Sin... sin..."

The Hierarch turned to Inwuhou, a wistful smile on his face. "Inwuhou, is it? I can see why my oldest friend betrayed me. You're very brave to have climbed to the sacred and interdicted grounds of the Luminous Top. Why are you here?"

Dugan cut in here, "She seduced the traitor, entered the gardens, and attacked me. When I locked her into the icehouse to be with her lover, she managed to escape with him. Then she ambushed me and broke both of my arms. She also pierced my nerves with needles."

The Hierarch rushed to Dugan's side, concern all over his face, "Dugan! Let me see those wounds. My poor husband..."

Inwuhou spent the next several minutes in tense silence as the Hierarch fussed with Dugan and eventually laid him down on the bed to recover. She took this opportunity to glance back in history, slowed, and felt only a cold pit of terror. Wemer had died quickly when the Hierarch stabbed him in both temples with that tiny sewing needle. Possibly, he hadn't even had the time to realize that his leader had attacked him.

A sheen of cold sweat gathered on Inwuhou when the Hierarch finished tucking in his husband and turned to her. He wasn't smiling, but still spoke with that even, breathy falsetto, "You are a very resourceful and skilled young lady. Pretty, clever, strong, and brave. What a shame, that you had to hurt my Dugan."

Inwuhou's staff was already flicking out in <Autumn Winds Sweep Leaves>, her mind already turning time into a winter-molasses crawl. It was almost too slow. The Hierarch's blow towards her temple was disrupted, the needle grazing her cheek as he drew back to parry her staff. Her arms shook with the impact as the Hierarch's sewing needle the heavy staff, but there was no time to think.

The back end of her staff came around as the weapon rolled into a <Flowing Clouds Swallows Moon>, the wavering tip simultaneously attacking towards his jaw, lower rib, and elbow. The needle flicked towards her wrist. The parried front end of her staff smashed in half a vase holding a sprig of bamboo.

"Oh! You're pretty good!" The compliment was lost to Inwuhou's ears as she dipped her arm to retract her attack and dodge the needle. The Hierarch wasn't fooled, taking a step to the side and avoiding the simultaneous short kick to his inside of his leading knee.

He was close. Too close. Inwuhou slammed down her staff to spring backwards to avoid another viper-like strike of the needle, then started <Sixteen Chained Shadows> in midair. She aborted after four kicks, his precisely placed needles had forced her to turn aside her own kicks each time or have her ankle pierced. The exchange had bought her distance, and that's what mattered.

Inwuhou's hand pushed down on the staff and released. The weapon sprung forward into <Upset Heaven and Earth>, scything up towards the Hierarch's face. The dull clack of wood-on-tiny-sliver-of-metal sounded again, the staff parried and sailed off towards the nearby dresser.

The main fragment of the smashed vase shattered on the wooden floor.

The nauseating, creaking feeling of Paradox clawed to the forefront of Inwuhou's mind. She wasn't going to be able to continue expanding time for much longer; her speed was barely sufficient to continue retreating as it was. Her freed hands retreated into the opposite sleeves and she used the rest of her needles in <Goddess Scatters Flowers>. Then her back slammed into the wall of the small room.

She was ready for that. Her knife hissed from its sheath and Inwuhou kicked off of her wall, <Sage Points the Path> was not meant to be executed from mid-air, but gained all the more power and speed because of it. Led slightly by a cloud of silvered steel needle singing through the air, Inwuhou sailed for one decisive blow.

There was a chain of tinking noises, like a bucket of shot falling on a tin roof. Her wrist stung and her hand went numb. The knife spun out of her grasp.

Inwuhou's staff went through one of two windows in the room, the shattering of glass mixed harmonically with the hissing of her knife across the floor and under the nightstand. Inwuhou fell heavily onto the floor as the world came back up to speed. She clutched at the needle-hole on her wrist and tried to reverse the wound. The head-spinning pressure of Paradox vetoed it.

Yet the Hierarch did not attack. He was staring.

[Inwuhou]

"Sana."

Inwuhou looked up at the Hierarch's face, which was fluctuating wildly between elation, sadness, regret, and something else.

"Sana." The sewing needle tinkled to the floor.

Inwuhou said nothing as she climbed carefully to her feet. Then she was enveloped in the Hierarch's tight hug, her nose filled with heavy perfume.

"Sana. Sana. Sana." He repeated this for minutes before finally pulling back and holding her by the shoulders, "It's me! It's ... its your father!"

"My name is Inwuhou."

"No, no, no, no no no. You're Sana. You're my Sana. Say it! Say, 'father'."

"Honored sir, my name is Inwuhou. I was orphaned as a child."

The Hierarch's eyes rove wildly, searching for something on Inwuhou's face, "No, no. You're Sana. Your mother sent you away to the Wuji when... when you were little. She sent you away. But you're back, and you're Sana. And you're back. You found me! Say it! Say, 'father'."

Inwuhou thought. The name was familiar.

"Say it! Say, 'father.' Say, 'father.'"

"Honored sir, my name is Inwuhou. I am a Wuji nun and I know a Sana. She-"

"No! You're my Sana. You have to be... please."

Inwuhou recognized a dangerous glint in the Hierarch's eyes. The man was insane, no doubt about it. He must have recognized her particular style, unique to the Wuji temple. She was not his Sana, but he wanted, no, needed to see his daughter. Such was the painful nettle of familial bonds; it was just as the teachers have described it.

"... F-Father." She would have to atone for lying when she returned to the temple.

A crushing hug again enveloped her. This continued for some time longer

"You look just like your mother. Just, like her. I'm... I'm so sorry." The Hierarch's face was wet with tears now. He guided Inwuhou over to the first room and lifted the small painting off of the table, "Look... just like her."

Inwuhou knew what she looked like, of course. There was no resemblance whatsoever between her and the woman in the painting. However, she did recognize Sana in the chin, the placid eyes, and the nose. The Hierarch was alternately stroking Inwuhou's cheek and stroking the painting's face now, muttering, "I'm sorry... I'm sorry."

Ten minutes later, the Hierarch was slumped over in one of the guest chairs, having collected himself a little. He was a different man, his pink sleeves damp with tears, his makeup smudged beyond recognition. Even his voice had a gravelly content to the falsetto.

"It was because of the Chrysanthemum Manual. It held the greatest martial arts; the practitioner must first ... first castrate himself. The male essence isn't compatible with the Manual's secrets." He looked over at Inwuhou; she shivered a little under that gaze. "How I envy you! I wish I was born a girl, like you. Being a man was-"

He shook his head, interrupting himself, "After I started practicing it, I gradually lost interest in ... in your mother. I started to hate her. She always reminded me that I wasn't... that I was a man. It had been only a year since you were born, but she kept you secret from me! I saw so little of her that I didn't know that you... you existed. Or that she had sent you - no... Sana - away to a nunnery for safety. She didn't go. She wanted to be by my side..."

"I killed her. I killed her and threw her bones into the waterfall. I... I was insane. I ... no."

The Hierarch held the painting to his chest and fixed Inwuhou with a pleading look, "Will you forgive me? No... no... you're... not Sana. But you're her friend. You can tell her."

Of course Sana would forgive him. She, like Inwuhou, was an orphan-nun. She also viewed familial ties as restraints to be escaped on the path to spiritual enlightenment.

"Yes."

The Hierarch sighed and settled lower in his chair. He came to a decision. A short fumbling later, he had pulled out the long, golden, pearl-topped pin that held his hair together. The lush black hair spilled down the back, past his sash, and laid up on his skirt.

"Take this to Sana. The Church will know it. The Church will know her. Tell her... no, ask her to visit me. Please."

Inwuhou accepted it and then stood.

"Where are you going? Already? Stay for dinner, at least."

"Not yet, there is something that must be done." Inwuhou stepped past the Hierarch and into the room where Dugan slept. She walked up to the cool corpse on the ground, clasped her hands, and began.

""The bowed head naturally cleanses the heart. The boundless, honored spirit of the world is naturally compassionate. The world after is clouded with and rains fragrance, flowers, treasures, and countless wonders..."

(Fin)

[Revenant]

Plot: (18)

Storytelling (6) – All of the required prompts were completed for round 3. Your entry was a comprehensive tale with a comprehensive line of progression. I don’t often see a well done eastern themed thread, and you did a good job with it.

Setting (6) – You presented a very vivid landscape throughout the thread, one that really brought me, as a reader, into your story. The only real problem with this section that I found was that your first post was a bit too engrossed in description, which dulled the effect and made for a slow opening.

Pacing (6) – While the end of the thread felt a little rushed, there was a good rhythm throughout the thread of emerging issues that Inwuhou had to overcome as they presented themselves.

Character: (19)

Communication (7) – I really appreciated the effort that went into pointing out the particulars of Inwuhou’s speaking pattern, which made it all that much more potent when her patient tone fell away in the icehouse when she was talking with Dugan. It was only for a moment and her control was quickly reestablished, but it was very humanizing and added to the depth of her character.

Action (5) – While the insertion of the names of the movements that Inwuhou and her opponents were making added to the feel of the story and the setting, it broke up the flow of the action. While flavorful in small doses, this was a bit overdone.

Persona (7) – This story did a good job of fleshing out Inwuhou through her emotions, or lack thereof. Even her stoic nun-ness did a good job of portraying who her character was. The little bits of humor added in, such as almost braining herself on her staff in the beginning or calling out modestly after the poison dart incident gave her a feeling of youthfulness and that she was still in the early steps of her journey of enlightenment.

Prose: (19)

Mechanics (8) – You did a good job keeping things clean and in order. No real issues here.

Clarity (6) – During your combat scenes the bracketed move names tended to interrupt the flow of the story. Without denoting what some of the moves meant I was left wondering exactly what was going on. Generally, you don’t want to lay out every little detail of what’s going on in your scenes, but at the same time you need to give the reader a bit more than you did.

Technique (5) – The use of titles for your combat maneuvers was a bit clunky in places. There was some good flavor that it brought in areas, but the effect was somewhat lost when used too much. Additionally, the use of the brackets to denote the titles was slightly jarring as a reader. Putting the titles into the flow of the writing would have been more effective without the brackets.

Wildcard: (5)

Total: 61

Inwuhou receives 610 exp and 100 gp.