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If this is supposed to be a game thought Chu Yunxiu, then I’m definitely losing.
She blamed her years of playing Glory for giving her false expectations. At first it had been exciting to imagine the land of magic and wonder that would greet her when the System told her she would be transmigrating into “a fantasy world.” What a sweet summer child she’d been. Little did she know that the Seven Kingdoms were a place where danger and death would await her at every turn.
At first, it felt like playing a fruitless game of hot and cold, watching the progress bar at the top of her screen like a hawk, waiting for the level to rise above the depressing 0% it started out with as she wandered across the land.
The Riverlands peasant girl she’d transmigrated into had been living a simple existence as just another one of the smallfolk. Her only memento of her previous life was Windy Rain account card, which for some reason had made the journey with her, appearing in her hand when she’s materialized. She couldn’t imagine why she was meant to have it. Clearly, there were no card readers to be found in Westeros.
It had been strange at first, inhabiting the body of a different person. She caught her reflection in a stream - the girl’s features were rounder and fuller than her own, but color of her hair was a perfect match for Yunxiu’s auburn highlights. In time, she grew accustomed to it, and if nothing else it made it easier to blend in. No one noticed when she wandered off, hitching a ride on a cargo barge headed towards Highgarden.
The System was infuriatingly unhelpful, the sleek interface of the HUD providing facts and figures about the world of Westeros at random intervals. Really, it felt like little more than a glorified tourism app, and Yunxiu grit her teeth in frustration every time it brought up some new piece of trivia.
No, I don’t care about the dimensions of the Queen’s Ballroom in Maegor’s Holdfast. Could you please just tell me something useful?
Was it supposed to be some sort of poetic justice in the fact that she, with her reputation for ineffectual leadership, would be a host to the most passive and unhelpful system imaginable?
How was she supposed to work with a broken System? If this is supposed to be a some kind of cute metaphor, she didn’t find it funny at all.
As it was, she couldn’t even tell if her main objective was to seduce one of the local lordlings or assassinate the queen regent.
Not as though Cersei Lannister is likely to grant me an audience...
Idly kicking up dust as she tread the long dirt road to Lannisport, she imagined how she should style herself:
I am Chu Yunxiu of House Misty Rain. First of her name, mother to rookies and captain of eSports...
Her sullen mood anchored her thoughts, and for a brief moment, she wondered what it would be like to stay here forever, trapped in a world where she had no place, like Jenny of Oldstones. (Thanks, System, for introducing that tidbit of history).
Unlike Jenny, though, she definitely wanted to leave. She had to.
Homesickness gripped Yunxiu’s heart. She missed Suzhou, and she missed her dramas, but most of all, she missed her team.
There was just one day where she thought she’d be able to contact them, when suddenly the System spoke to her and it was in Li Hua’s voice.
“Heyyy, can you hear me?”
“Y wees!” She’d stopped dead in her tracks as she shouted, so relieved that she didn’t care if anyone looked at her and thought she’d gone mad. “Are you okay? How is everyone? Are they sticking to their practice schedules?”
“Listen...I need to tell you something...” Li Hua’s voice had begun cutting in and out “Your objective is...you’re supposed to find this guy...a strategist...his sign is a mockingbird...”
“What the...?” Yunxiu hissed in baffled annoyance. Honestly, weren’t there enough strategists running around in the gaming-obsessed world of 2026 China? Who was it that was so special that she should have to get dragged into this death trap to find him? The glitchy sound of the audio quickly regained her attention. “Li Hua! You’re breaking up.”
“S-sorry! Just hang in there, Captain!” That was the last Yunxiu heard of any friendly voices.
She tried to tell herself it was no big loss, that she’d be able to handle things on her own. It wasn’t as thought there were many good internet tutorials on how to steal an actual horse.
On her fourth attempt, she finally managed it - the first two times, the horses had run away before she could climb astride, and on the third, she’d been seen by the guards and had been forced to flee.
She was getting the hang of riding, now, as well as foraging for food and finding places to hide when night fell. In her innermost thoughts, she couldn’t deny the cold, sick feeling she felt when she recalled that she hadn’t heard Li Hua’s voice in weeks. She had been here for more than a hundred days, and not once in all that time had she felt truly safe.
Yunxiu was haunted by the ever-present stench of death that seemed to permeate the air, even in the green meadows of the Reach. She soon found out in the course of her travels that the wildlife was hungrier and more savage than anything she'd seen in her city girl life. And far more frightening than the bears and direwolves were the monsters that walked on two legs.
A bannerless man attacked her when she was watering her horse one evening. He crept up from behind and grabbed her, but she managed to pull out the her weapon in time - a short-handled knife she’d nicked off a corpse. The blade was not Valyrian Steel, but Yunxiu’s hands were quick, jabbing hard at his vital points as she fought him off, not stopping until she head his body splash into the river. Bloody knife still in hand, she’d jumped on her horse and rode away as fast as she could. She may have killed him - who knew? Her critics had always claimed she didn’t have the will to fight. Well, they’d be eating their words now.
By the third moon turn, she suspected she’d trigged something like one of those time-fail counters in video games, where when you were taking too long to complete your objective, the system took pity on you by finally telling you where you had to go.
>>“The man you seek shelters himself on the eastern coast.”
Yunxiu groaned in frustration. All this time, she’d been headed in the wrong direction.
And so she headed east, armed with nothing more than an endless stream of useless information and her own pessimistic attitude.
She was a day’s journey east of Maidenpool, enjoying a leisurely ride along the high, rocky coastline when the band of brigands set upon her.
Her docile plough mare was no match for their bigger and stronger horses, and in the blink of an eye she was thrown to the ground as one of them caught her mount by the bride, causing the mare to jerk in terror.
Yunxiu scrambled to her feet, but it was already too late - the men surrounded her and she found herself with her back to the edge of the cliff.
“I’ve no gold for you...” she said, hating the tremble in her voice.
“It’s not your coin we want, sweetling,” the head bandit snarled with an evil laugh as his eyed raked over her body hungrily.
Yunxiu could smell them as they approached - the reek was worse than the death-rot stench she had grown used to after all these weeks. These men wore no colors of allegiance, and it was obvious they lived only to serve their own appetites.
She’d been able to escape one man, but half a dozen?
“Li Hua?” she thought, desperately, hoping against hope that she wouldn’t be alone in this. No such luck.
She continued to slowly walk back as the men crept ever closer, knowing that behind her there was nothing but a sheer drop into the sea. Finally, she made up her mind.
It was explained to her at the beginning that if you died, the System would force you restart...but surely that was better than enduring what these men had in store for her
With a record like mine, what’s another loss...she thought to herself bitterly as she turned and jumped into what the System assured her were kraken-infested waters.
She was awakened by the sound of knocking.
“You’re wanted downstairs, my lady,” called a young woman’s voice. Serving wench, Gulltown Tavern, clarified the System as she rubbed her eyes.
Yunxiu was still groggy, and it took all her willpower to pull herself out of the bed with its clean, dry sheets. Apparently, she hadn’t died this time. Someone must have come to her rescue.
She dressed herself in the clothes that had been laid out for her at the foot of the bed - a simple gown of brown wool. On a side table, she saw her account card as it caught the light from the candle flame. She decided to bring it with her, just in case, securing it at the small of her back in the wide strap of her girdle.
As she walked down the stairs, she looked over the tavern, and noticed the man at the bar looking at her with expectant eyes. He stood as she approached.
“I see you’re awake, my dear. Come. Sit by me. I’m so glad we found you when we did.” Ah, so this was her rescuer. She didn’t feel at all ready to trust this man, but even without information from the System, something told her that she couldn’t say no.
He was the most well-dressed man she’d seen in all her time in this wretched land. She stared at the rich blue and silver brocade of clothes, thinking how such finery put both Vaccaria’s and Windy Rain’s outfits to shame. At his throat, a mockingbird pin glittered in the dim light.
>>"A bag of dragons buys a man's silence for a while, but a well-placed quarrel buys it forever."
>>"Are you in league with Littlefinger?"
>>"...I would sooner wed the Black Goat of Qohor."
>>"I did warn you not to trust me, you know."
Quotes both by and about Petyr Baelish flew across her vision, and she watched with rapt attention as, for the first time, the System provided her with vital information, administering every detail of the man's history, and more importantly, his ambitions.
It was with better-informed eyes that she looked at her companion: Petyr Baelish. Former Master of Coin. Current Lord Protector of the Vale. Owner of brothels and the mind behind an impressive web of schemes. Yunxiu felt a subtle satisfaction that her instincts had been correct - she knew a master troll when she saw one.
“Captain! Be careful! This guy’s really, really dangerous.”
Li Hua she thought, not daring to speak aloud this time. Yeah, I kind of got that impression. Were have you been all this time?!
“Couldn’t get through until now. And also, he’s got a weird hangup about girls with red hair, so watch out for that.
Um, okay...?
“Apparently you have something to learn from him, so make it quick and get out of there!” Li Hua’s voice cut off with an abruptness that felt uncannily final.
Right. Gotcha.
Lord Petyr grinned at her, and Yunxiu could smell mint leaves on his breath.
She took her seat at the bar, where two tankards had already been laid out, and she noticed that her HUD suddenly vanished, and for the first time in so long, her peripheral vision was completely clear of obstructions. This felt like a final boss encounter all right.
Around them, the atmosphere of the tavern was warm and merry.
“Your name, my lady?”
“Chu Yunxiu of Misty Rain,” she said without thinking.
“From the mists of Rainwood? Odd, you do not have the look of a woman from the Stormlands,” Baelish said as he eyed her intently. Li Hua had been right. He did seem to be staring at her hair.
“I couldn’t leave such a lovely young lady as a feast for the crabs, now could I?” he said with good-natured chuckle. “Please, drink. You must be thirsty after your ordeal.”
He was right about that, but Yunxiu had a feeling she ought not accept any drink her offered. She nodded appreciatively as she pretended to take a sip from her ale.
“Now, do tell me more about where you came from.”
She told him of her hometown of Suzhou and the city’s tranquil canals and bridges, and he replied that it sounded not unlike his ancestral home of Braavos.
“And what did you do there?”
She took a moment to consider the life she’d left behind. Who was she, really? The underachieving captain of a mid-tier team forever destined to lose in the playoffs. After considering whether or not she would sound completely mad, Yunxiu decided that she didn’t care.
“I played a game for a living. My team fought under the banner of Misty Rain, and I was Lord Commander," she answered wistfully. He gave her a most curious look.
“A game? You mean like Cyvasse?”
“Yes...something like that.”
In their world, she said, the kings were tacticians with dirty hearts. She told him of the friends she had: shameless Maester Ye, the great magician Big-Eyed Wang, and the talkative knight Ser Huang.
Out came long vents about her struggles, her frustration over how both the team and their guild were never taken seriously and how executive decision making seemed to all but guaranteed that they’d be run into the ground yet again. She described her team and the roles they played - his brow furrowed in consternation when she tried to describe what a gunner was, but his eyes lit up when she mentioned Li Hua’s ninja.
“You employ a Faceless Man!” he exclaimed, clearly brimming with amusement. “How impressive.” He reached to take a sip from his own tankard and it seemed he was trying to suppress a giggle.
Ah yes, it was time to express her gratitude. She pulled out the Windy Rain account card.
“Here. My most valuable artifact. Please accept it as a token of my thanks for rescuing me.”
He took the card from her hand and turned it over in his fingers.
“What is...this?” He sounded genuinely perplexed, and Yunxiu had a teasing smile on her face as she answered.
“With this, I can summon a powerful avatar: Windy Rain. A master of the elements. Where I come from, it’s the source of all my power.” Lord Baelish didn’t respond, continuing to stare intently at the polycarbonate rectangle resting in his palm.
“What’s the meaning of this inscription?”
She realized he was talking about the Chinese characters emblazoned across the logo.
“Oh. That’s the name of the game. Glory.”
“Ah. Well then, I am honored to receive such a precious artifact.” He held up the card one last time before hiding it away somewhere in his doublet.”
“What a fascinating world you must inhabit,” he said airily.
“Perhaps it’s time to devise a way to overcome the ones standing in your way.”
Yunxiu scoffed.
“It’s not as if I can just shove my management team out of a Moon Door...” He looked up at her then, and his gray-green eyes were cold as ice. Yunxiu had never been one for mincing her words, but in that moment she wished she’d kept her thoughts to herself.
“It was indeed tragic, the fate the befell my late wife...” Lord Petyr’s cool reminiscence sent a chill down her spine. "You’ve a lively tongue, my lady. Mind what you say with it.” With that, his voice returned to its original jovial timbre. “I am certainly sorry to hear about your situation. It’s hard to find joy in the game when someone’s set you up to fail.”
“I...guess you’re right.”
Yunxiu tried to be wary as she ascended the steps to her room, but her mind was distracted. The night’s conversation had given her plenty of food for thought, and her mind had been reeling ever since she and Lord Baelish had made their seemingly cordial farewells.
*Is something trying to tell me that I’m powerless because I...choose to be? Please. If I ever get home, I know exactly what I want to change. There’s so much I could do differently...*
As she closed the door behind her, she looked in the mirror and was shocked to see her own true face staring back at her.
Her eyes gazed at the glowing text of her HUD as it sprang back into her vision, clear and bright. The progress bar was at a full 100% while in the middle of the display there flashed the most beautiful words she had ever seen:
>>“Actualization Threshold Achieved! Host, prepare for Desynchronization.”
“Finally...” Yunxiu closed her eyes as she felt her physical body fade out of existence.
She was so happy she thought she might cry.
Her eyes fluttered open and she took in the sight of her room, decorated in soothing tones of teal and sea foam green. House colors she thought to herself with an ironic twist of her lips
She was still dressed in the team uniform - the hated skirt and knee-high ensemble forced on her by the management. After a few more moments, a groggy memory of lying herself down on the bed resurfaced. It had been just after she’d had yet another tedious argument with the team owners over their increasingly pointless demands that had nothing to do with making the team stronger and everything to do with fake media publicity.
The last thing she could remember thinking, before she’d drifted off into that other world, was that she wished she could be anywhere else but here.
Yunxiu breathed a deep sigh of relief as she got out of bed. From this day forward, she would never again take for granted the simple luxuries of carpeted floors and jasmine room spray.
She slipped on her shoes and grabbed her Misty Rain team jacket, taking comfort in the familiar weight of the cloth as she slung it over her shoulders. When she got to the door and turned the knob, she nearly fell back into the room at the sight of Li Hua already there and ready to greet her.
“Captain! I’m so glad you’re back!” Yunxiu tsked at the exuberant welcome, but in her heart she was grateful.
“How long was I gone?” She asked, feigning detachment.
“Almost five hours!” Li Hua answered.
Only five hours. It had felt like a lifetime.
“We were so worried,” her vice captain lamented as they walked down the hallway. “Once you started talking to that Baelish guy, none of us could see what was happening to you. Good thing you were able to make it out of there on your own...”
“Thanks for your help out there,” Yunxiu blurted out, eager to change the subject. Her brief encounter with Littlefinger was still too raw in her mind to want to revisit so soon.
“Of course. We’re a team, aren’t we?” Li Hua gave her a supportive smile. “So, what did you learn on your journey? Did you find the secret to saving our team?” Yunxiu suppressed a sigh. Like a true Glory pro, her vice captain’s mind was always on the game.
“I think I definitely found something,” she said pensively.
Yunxiu’s pace was so brisk that Li Hua’s long, skinny legs struggled to keep up with her as she marched through the hallway and over to the other side of the Misty Rain team complex, not slowing down until she reached the door to the practice room.
“Yes!” Li Hua’s eyes held the eager excitement of a player who hadn’t yet lost hope. Yunxiu remembered how she had been like that once. “And...? So what was it?”
I think what I found was...myself.
“I’ll tell you about it later,” was what she said aloud, and together they made their entrance.
It was clear that they hadn’t been expected. One by one, the members of her team cast off their headphones and stood at attention as they took note of their presence.
“Welcome back, captain!”
Yunxiu beamed at them as she walked towards the banks of computers and over to her desk. It was good to be home.
As she settled in the chair at her station she realized that something felt different. For the first time in ages she felt...energized.
“Kexin! Keyi! Come over here for a minute,” she called out as inspiration struck.
The twin gunners meekly obeyed, silently observing Yunxiu as she unlocked her desk drawer and took out the case containing Misty Rain’s stash of reserve account cards. She opened it up and casually flipped through its contents before handing the entire box to Kexin.
“Here - take these and find a class you like to play.”
“Captain...?” Yunxiu could hear the confusion in her voice, and she primed herself to project confidence as she explained.
“Our team composition is a bad joke, and everyone knows it. It’s been stupid of us not to play to our own strengths. Find what works for you, and we’ll go from there. No more gimmicky bullshit.” She held up her clenched fist in a gesture of defiance.
“In the game of thrones, even the humblest pieces can have wills of their own.” Where had she gotten that line from? The twins smiled gleefully at each other as they took the cards, clearly too excited to be bothered by her strange comment.
“Thank you, Captain!” The two of them bounded over to the nearest computer with the hyperactive energy of a pair of little kids ready to test drive some new toys.
“Yunxiu!” Li Hua dropped the formality in his surprise. She responded with an offhanded shrug.
“It worked for Happy, didn’t it?”
Whether her encounter with Lord Baelish had been meant as a cautionary tale or a spark of inspiration was something she would have to puzzle out on her own time. For now, there was plenty of work to be done. It was time for a change.
She sat down at her desk and began her next task.
Li Hua followed, and when he noticed what had popped up her screen, she could hear him gasp aloud.
“Is that what I think it is?” he asked, sounding concerned.
“It’s a recruitment offer, yes.”
“For Fang Rui??” She almost snickered at his obvious alarm.
“Our team could use someone with a head for unconventional tactics. Besides, I like the way he handled Sun Xiang last season. It’ll be a good deal - I might even offer to go on a date with him. Once.” Li Hua simply gaped at her.
“I...don’t think management will approve...”
“Who cares what they think? They’ve proved over and over again that they’re idiots.”
Her vice captain’s features were twisted in a conflicted expression.
“It’s just that he’s so...dirty...” How ironic, coming from the Alliance’s number one ninja.
“In Glory, dirtiness is a universal privilege!” she declared with conviction. The whole team turned their heads at her outburst.
“Er...” Poor Li Hua. She really would have to catch him up with her plans at some point.
Well, since she had their full attention now...
“Okay, here’s an official announcement, straight from your captain!” she hollered, “Next match, ditch the skirts if you want. People are coming to watch us play, not stare at our thighs.” The girls of Misty Rain nodded vigorously in agreement.
Small steps to be sure, but it was more than she’d dared to change since she’d been appointed captain. It was the start of a new season, and by putting things in motion now, there was no telling how they’d end up by the close of the year.
“Hope you’re all ready to make another run for the playoffs,” she said as she looked out across the room and scanned the faces of her team. Her bold words were met with wide, blinking stares. “We’re going for the championship again, and this time, it’s serious.”
Motes of dust and rays of early morning sunshine drifted into the empty room on the second floor of the Gulltown Tavern as the proprietor unlocked the door. Lord Baelish and his entourage stood just behind, all frowning in stony silence once they realized that Chu Yunxiu was nowhere to be found.
“You’re certain this door was kept locked all night?” he asked icily. The innkeeper could only make apologies - what else could he do? They’d both been right there when he’d put the key in the lock last night.
It was a shame about the strange woman - an investment in her would have been a profitable one - of that he was sure. He’d planned to have an escort bring her to his establishment in King’s Landing - after he’d had her tongue cut out. Lord Petyr grit his teeth in annoyance. Never before had an asset slipped so cleanly out of his grasp.
Ignoring the tavernkeeper’s babbling, he calmly removed himself from the situation, stepping out of the room without a word before heading down the stairs and out of the inn, fingertips tracing along the edges of the card he held tight in his hand. A subconscious impulse led him further, and no one stood in his as he walked through the entrance to the city’s battlements and made his way atop the wall overlooking the shoreline. It was from here that he’d spotted her when she’d first washed up. He looked down and took in the sight of the empty sand bar. The only sign of life was the cry of seabirds mixed with the rumbling of the waves.
He deftly brought out the account card with a flick of his fingers, and once he’d taken a long last look at the insignia of wings and crossed swords, he raised his arm to cast it into the water.
He drew his hand back, ready to let fly, but at the last moment he stopped himself. Perhaps it was the metallic gold shine of the crest or a lingering curiosity about the words she’d described - all Lord Baelish knew was, something compelled him to take the card and tuck it into the sturdy leather money pouch at his belt. It was a most peculiar artifact, seemingly worthless in fact, but the strange bird did seem to have a genuine attachment to it, he recalled with wry amusement. For now, it wouldn’t hurt to hold on to the little thing.
After all, there was no guarantee that its owner wouldn’t be back someday.