Work Text:
A/N: For the purpose of this story, please assume the theatre in Jinzhou is much larger than it is in-game. This story was an intrusive thought. Enjoy.
(edit) removed part of this author's note.
A Mouth Full of Thorns
A lucky wind blew through Jinzhou.
Balloons filled the air; merchants shouted the names of their wares from the sides of the street. What little headway one could make in the crowd was immediately swallowed once they passed through. The cheer was palpable. The Ovathrax was beaten back, and it was as though a great cramp was released. All was well.
Even a month ago, few would have given such a prognosis; however, "a few" was not zero.
"Ovathrax gone, live ever long!" With Lingyang's cheer, the crowd raised their cups and voices in unison.
A small stage was set up in between two merchant's stalls. The theatre being under construction in preparation for the performance in the evening by the Lion Troupe, Lingyang and a few others took it upon themselves to give the masses an appetizer.
Two co-performers flanked Lingyang with sabers glistening silver.
"Will anyone in the crowd volunteer to give me something to cut!" One said. The other chimed, "Fear neither sword, hammer, nor fall; the Lion Troupe has seen them all!"
A woman in the crowd consulted with her friends, then untied a yellow ribbon from her hair. The two co-performers held out their sabers edge-up before her. The lady let the ribbon fall, and it split into three pieces. A frenzy spread throughout the crowd. If the co-performers said another rhyme, it was lost in the wave of noise.
The drums began a slow heartbeat. The co-performers took their place on the sides of the stage with Lingyang in the center.
The heartbeat slowed, deepened, then stopped. All was still. The crowd stared at Lingyang at center stage; he had his eyes closed. Seconds passed.
Boom-boom-boom-boom-boom
With the waterfall of drumbeats, a sword was thrown from Lingyang's left, a full moon cutting towards him in a straight line. He kicked up with his left, seemingly dooming himself to be bisected at the waist, until he swung his other foot in a flash, caught the sword while upside down, then landed perfectly, swinging the sword twice in a flourish in front of him. A tsunami of cheers erupted.
The second co-performer threw his sword sideways in a horizontal disc towards him. Lingyang tossed his first sword in the air, kicking himself sideways to horizontally face his assailant. Simultaneously, he caught the flying sword passing below him with the newly-freed hand and the falling sword floating above him with the opposite hand. The momentum of the disc-sword turned him enough that with a contraction of his out-spread legs, Lingyang could spin twice as a horizontal top before landing on the stage again, holding both of the swords along his arms with his back facing the crowd. Another frenzy; a few fainted.
The three performers on stage gathered together and bowed repeatedly to the crowd. Through the eyes of an onlooker, it would seem as though it were a contest between whether the crowd would disperse before the performers stopped bowing, or whether the performers ceased bowing even in the face of uproarious applause. Mercifully, some families broke off at the edges of the crowd, and the performers could save face.
It was getting dark. Lingyang bantered with his friends as the crowd dwindled to nearly nothing. There were always a few who wanted to speak to him afterwards to request a private performance: newly-minted fiancés, those celebrating birthdays or the opening of a new establishment. As his co-performers packed up and made their way to the theatre, Lingyang sat down at the end of the stage, crossing his legs. At this height, he still had to look up a bit to meet the eyes of his customers, but he liked it this way. He felt like one of those lucky cat statues one would find in a restaurant.
Lingyang processed the requests one by one, beginning and ending each interaction with a lucky saying tailored to each customer. A figure in a hooded robe at the back of the line approached closer and closer.
"Streets filled with joy, laughter, and more; good fortune and prosperity soar!" Lingyang cheered; the grey-eyed stranger couldn't help but smile a little wider. Although grinning as he usually did, Lingyang couldn't silence the thought that her pupils were the color of old blood. "I'm Lingyang. What should I call you?"
The hooded lady hummed a low, continuous tone. Lingyang's instincts flared; the lady seemed to smile a bit wider.
"It is as I thought," she said. "Those are light gloves, not armored gloves."
"Huh?" Lingyang said without thinking.
"Your friends with the swords, they wore armored gloves, but you didn't." The hooded lady leaned a little closer and reached for Lingyang's hand. He let her take it, and she brought it closer to her to observe. "But you still have some cuts?"
Lingyang shook his head. "Those are usually because I get tired during practice… and I slip up."
"When you get tired?" The hooded lady brought a finger to her lips and lightly tapped them. "And when you weren't tired you didn't get a single cut?"
The question was innocuous; were it said by any other person, Lingyang would answer it in an instant. "… No. I can usually tell by instinct when I'm not going to catch a sword going that fast. And I get out of the way." Towards the beginning of the sentence, the hooded lady's smile cracked a bit more towards her ears.
"What is your name?"
Lingyang bristled. He resisted a pressure that pushed his vision towards the floor; the smile was long gone from his face. How could those four words provoke such a reaction in him? Lingyang's intuition snapped onto a conclusion: up until now, those old-blood pupils didn't see a single thing in front of them, but now, this lady was truly lookingat him. "… It's Lingyang."
"Lingyang… can I ask you to recite any lucky cheer I make up?" Before Lingyang could give his affirmation, the hooded lady continued: "Garden of flowers, garden of dormant seeds; one taken from each to the other, only one pleads."
Lingyang scowled. "Wherever evil dies, justice thrives; all seeds shall bloom, all smiles shall shine."
The hooded lady let out a laugh. It was so light and joyful, Lingyang struggled to accept it came from someone so imbued with danger.
"My name is Camellya." She turned slightly away from him, her eyes still tracking his. Lingyang couldn't help but notice the black flower ribbon tying up her grey hair. "What a promising seed… perhaps we will meet again soon."
Lingyang maintained his silence. Camellya winked at him and walked away.
Long after she was gone, Lingyang thought about the cheer she asked him to recite. She reminded him of a flower… a flower in Jinzhou. And she had called him a promising seed, among so many others she looked right through.
The show was comprised of multiple phases, with the last phase being the liondance. The liondance could take on multiple forms depending on requests made to Lingyang or Master, the eldest member of the troupe who had brought Lingyang onboard years ago. However, it could only vary so much. The phases before the liondance, on the other hand, were completely changeable, representing independent stories the troupe created or adopted from other performers.
The phases took on a hierarchy of skill. The Lion Head would participate in the last stage, and the least skilled members would participate in the early phases. However, the later phases were still difficult and required immense dedication and precision.
And both of the performers of the second-to-last phase were missing.
Master shuffled to-and-fro between the other performers, asking where they had last seen them. It was ten minutes until their phase. A few troubling thoughts crossed Lingyang's mind.
"Master, maybe I can go out and find them," Lingyang offered. "The streets have cleared by now, so it shouldn't be too hard."
He softly shook his head. "No… no that wouldn't work. Lingyang, you have done this story a thousand times before becoming the Lion Head. You are the only one who can buy us time if Jiang and Luhan don't arrive."
Lingyang bit the inside of his cheek. Circles Lingyang traced on his knee became sharp zigzagged lines. Eventually, he tossed himself off of the crate he sat on and stepped further backstage, where it opened to some greenery.
The performance told a story about a fated encounter between a goddess and a legendary warrior. The warrior sought divinity, but he could not cultivate it within himself because of the death of his master, who was the only human knowledgeable of the techniques and conditions required to do so. This goddess had mentored his master, so the warrior sought out this goddess to ask if she could pass the technique back down to him.
The first twenty minutes of the performance was the warrior climbing to the goddess's domain, with an emphasis on treacherous jumps, impossible handholds, and death-defying flourishes. Lingyang knew this portion would completely exhaust him, but the rest of the performance after the encounter with the goddess would be much easier.
Time passed, and Luhan and Jiang did not appear. As Lingyang saw Master's face fill with creases, Lingyang resolved to at least do his part. There would be a full accounting of what happened after this was over. His job for the moment was to raise the crowd's spirits to the heavens.
As Lingyang passed the other members of the Lion Troupe, they each patted him on the shoulder.
If there was foul play involved, nothing would stop Lingyang; the troupe was unanimous on this.
Because Lingyang was the Head of the Lions.
The stage was arranged with a sparce array of plum blossom poles, which escalated rapidly in height and distance between them as one progressed to the top. The actor needed to be visible the entire path to the top, so the sparse arrangement served both to prevent the obscuring of the audience's vision and to add to the marvel of the performance itself.
Lingyang had progressed to the point where the plum blossom poles sharpened into wooden points, impossible to step on without piercing their shoes. There were five of these poles, the last one followed by a flat-topped pole with a metal lip that rose two meters above the sharp point of the previous pole.
The first pointed plum blossom pole was one stride's length in front of Lingyang, and each pole was two full strides apart. The crowd murmured in anxiety. Surely, this was an impossible obstacle.
Lingyang crouched down and grabbed the first pointed plum blossom pole with both hands, lifting the rest of his body as if he had stabbed a spear into the ground and lifted his body in alignment with that spear. The crowd cheered as he swung his legs into a wide, roundabout path toward the next spear-pole, whipped his body, then realigned himself midair to catch the next spear-pole with his hands. By swinging along the sides of the spear-poles like this, he reached the last one, where he swooped his legs downwards then upwards while pushing with all his might with his upper body. It was clearly not enough: he had led the jump with his feet first, so his upper body could not possibly catch the metal lip of the elevated plum blossom pole – or so the crowd thought.
With a final upside-down twist of his body, Lingyang caught the metal lip with the tip of his right foot and stabilized himself on the base of pole with his other foot, bringing his stance perpendicular to the pole as if gravity were turned sideways. The crowd roared.
So many cheers, for what amounted to the halfway point.
By the time Lingyang reached the apex plum blossom pole, two meters in diameter, every muscle in his body was on fire. Even though he slowed down towards the end, Lingyang just barely managed to control his breathing. From here on out was the easy part – or no part at all. If Luhan was here, then she would descend from the rafters, and they would do a dance confined to this platform. Lingyang lifted his gaze towards the ceiling, waiting for either a new pair of spotlights to come on or for everything to go dark.
…
Hm, hm, hm-hm hm, hm.
Someone hummed an ominous melody as two spotlights switched on. Camellya sleepily descended from the rafters, slowly spinning upside-down with a knee bent. She held out one red vine that floated like a thin ribbon, round and round. Camellya extended another arm: another red vine. In an inverted pirouette, she turned, using her legs to go fast and slow in a cycle, then with a graceful bend at her waist, switched the vines supporting her from the rafters from her knees to her wrist. With a few more cycles with the red vines sprouting from her heels, she let her speed dwindle, and she landed softly on the apex platform.
Lingyang was stunned into silence; he could not hear the crowd's massive cheers. The woman in front of him was stunningly beautiful. Camellya was without her robe, so she appeared before the crowd with her ash-white clothes and daring windows on her sides: like somebody metaphorically picked a flower and offered it to Lingyang. Yet something boiled within him. They stood at opposite sides of a two-meter platform. Camellya playfully leaned to the side and looked up at him from below; Lingyang barely registered it.
A menacing growl few others have heard from Lingyang sounded: "Where are they?"
At this, Camellya closed her eyes slightly and straightened up. She took a few steps forward, leaning in close to Lingyang's ear as if to tell a secret: "Are your instincts failing you already?" Then she roughly pushed him off the edge of the platform.
"RRAH" Lingyang reoriented midair, his tail waving wildly to regain his balance. Swinging his leg to the side, he caught a pole with the crevice of his ankle, then guided his spin to land a foot squarely on the body of another pole. With the first solid foothold, Lingyang subsequently tore through five poles and regained his elevation to Camellya, but he was sloppy.
The burst of energy made his momentum direct and predictable; Camellya easily side-stepped his punch. With a horizontal spin, Lingyang slashed his heel towards her face – nearly connecting, if it weren't for a sword she spawned from her wrist. Dropping and spinning on her knees, Camellya spun the sword around, creating a red slash that bisected everything at waist level on the platform. Lingyang had jumped; a wrong move. He could not push off anything to redirect his momentum as Camellya easily swiped upwards.
With a grunt, he kicked as hard as he could towards the hilt of her sword, partially cutting his shoe but saving himself from being slashed in half. Immediately hooking her wrist at his ankle, Lingyang pulled himself forward with a tug of his leg and thrust a flurry of kicks at her. Camellya barely maintained an inch of distance, until the final thrust brought her to the end of the platform. Judging that this one was going to hit, she threw out a toothed bloom at Lingyang, trading one blow for another.
The toothed bloom grappled Lingyang's arm, then slammed him onto the platform. It dragged him along and off the ledge again. As Lingyang reoriented, two vines whipped him midair. Camellya was below him, and they were both falling.
Camellya maneuvered through the poles as if she were floating. In between tall poles, she swung on her vines; with level poles, it was as if she barely touched them with her feet. Lingyang had to make his movement more and more explosive to keep up. His muscles screamed.
Another vine whipped around a pole and hit Lingyang in the back of the head; he fell another couple of meters before finding a foothold. While Camellya's dance was round and graceful, Lingyang's unrelenting charge was as though he were being yanked around by strings. He sought the high ground to feign an advantage, then immediately descended below her to attack, but the distance between them was nearly insurmountable; he was slowing down. At one point, it seemed as though he had finally reached her, then a red vine sprouted from her heel and struck his face. His vision blackened, and in that split moment the vine wrapped around his neck and slammed him into another pole.
Then there was only the sound of rushing air.
[Years in the past]
It was a grey winter morning. Lingyang sat with his legs crossed in the snow. The troupe behind him was warming up, eating breakfast around the fire, but Lingyang's appetite had been dampened from the early morning crisis.
"How is the guardian deity of the central plains doing?" Master spoke from behind him.
Lingyang continued drawing in the snow with a twig in front of him. A rumor had popped up about him. During the winters when the troupe practiced in the central plains, Lingyang's sharp ears had always alerted him to dangers; he always came running. Many people were saved by him, but being surrounded by the gore of the defeated beast wasn't conducive to good first impressions. This rumor of a tiger-faced guardian was the result.
Master stood for a bit behind him, then sat next to Lingyang. He was still a growing teenager – one with claws and sharp teeth, but a teenager, nonetheless. "Is there something the matter? The troupe is probably missing you right now."
It was a difficult thing to admit, because it was stupid. It was a blessing; but it drew warmth from his soul. "I awakened my forte this morning, when I went and saved that hiker."
"That's wonderful news!" Master clapped. Lingyang provided no response. "… And you don't think this is a good thing?" It finally occurred to Master that Lingyang had been away from the fire for more than an hour. Was he not cold?
"I… don't like it. No one likes the cold. My forte is glacio. After living so long in the cold, I still can't shake my fear of it. I wanted to give warmth to those around me… how could this be right?" Lingyang tossed his twig some distance away. "How does your forte's element get chosen anyway?"
He and master sat for some time in silence. From his memory, master could not recall any other Lion Troupe member who had awakened their forte. But that was no matter.
"Who said you couldn't bring warmth to those around you with glacio?" Master asked.
Lingyang's ears perked. Bring warmth, with glacio? It felt like a contradiction.
"I would have loved to awaken a glacio forte, personally." Master tapped his temple. "How many hours do we practice every day? How about in the summers? With an ice-cold core inside of me, I just know that I could go on forever. I would make an eternal parade, with never-ending cheer – a lion dance that could shake the stars out of the sky!"
An aura of blue exploded around Lingyang. Frost covered his cheeks as he violently kicked his feet around and landed on the stage floor below him.
"Camellya!"
For the first time in their fight, Camellya's smile fell. She wore an expression of genuine surprise.
"This is my curtain call!"
A tail like that of a comet followed Lingyang as he rocketed towards her. The overclocking wavelengths threw him the entire distance between them, and Camellya lost all air in her lungs as Lingyang's flying kick landed on her stomach. Ever the experienced fighter, Camellya didn't lose a beat.
Lingyang abandoned all feints and began an unmitigated offensive. Any toothed bloom thrown became nothing more than platforms to launch Lingyang further towards its sender; needless to say, Camellya abandoned those to contend with Lingyang with only red vines and red steel.
In a fraction of a second, Camellya threw herself downwards with her vines, and once Lingyang gave unceasing chase, kicked a vine from her heel. It became incredibly difficult to aim effectively, though, as every path Lingyang took was that of a jagged line bouncing between the plum blossom poles.
Camellya reached the floor first, and she ceased striking for a fraction of a second. Before she had lifted her eyes upwards, Lingyang was already careening towards her; Camellya's sword was mysteriously out of sight.
With a screaming intuition, Lingyang twisted his body as Camellya spawned her sword from her wrist and launched it directly towards him. With an irrational, beast-like agility, his body turns from a straight, pouncing line to an arched shape that barely evaded the razor-sharp blade.
This maneuver was just enough to put Lingyang off his timing. Camellya stepped to the side, and slashed with vines from both of her wrists. Lingyang crashed into both of them as he slammed onto the floor. Stopping his tumble early by driving his claw into the floor's wood, Lingyang recovered and threw himself faster than Camellya anticipated. A punch with his right hand in the stomach lifted her off of her feet. A bone-breaking roundhouse kick made her head bounce on the stage floor. A red vine barely deflected Lingyang's left hand from slamming into her face. With inhuman speed, Camellya brought her right foot to the right of Lingyang's head and her left foot to the left of Lingyang's left leg. With a twist of her hips, Camellya reversed their positions, one leg driving Lingyang's head to the floor and the other leg sweeping both of his feet from under him in a windmill-like clockwise movement.
"YES!" Camellya smiled like a maniac. Blood drenched one side of her head. "Keep the dance GOING!"
Like a nightmare, Camellya's hair turned red, and a choir of green and crimson exploded from her back; a crimson flower burst in full bloom on her chest, and the most intense overclocking waves Lingyang had ever felt in his life impacted him.
It threw him across the stage and into a plum blossom pole, breaking it. Pops and cracks riddled his body. By reflex, Lingyang tucked his legs and tumbled, then slowed himself with his hand, but just as Lingyang dragged his eyes upwards, the Bloom Witch was already upon him.
Three vines drove him towards a crimson tornado of slashes. With all conscious thought stripped from his mind, Lingyang launched off the floor with one leg and perfectly smashed the head at the center of the tornado, stunning Camellya.
It was a flow state. This was the first time that Lingyang could move and not even remember what he did a moment before; where he could run, strike, jump, dive not as if he were one person, but an avatar taking one infinitesimal fraction like a tithe from each of his ancestors – a fraction of a thousand existential fights, creating one free-flowing perfect taolu.
This was what it meant to awaken a forte in a beast. To take everyone along with you. The destiny of your species, in Total War against the Lament. To live a life for everyone – the shape of that life being uniquely your own and precious. A sacrifice repaid a thousand-fold.
This was his Total War.
Lingyang blinked, and he could see her in front of him; he was already halfway to her.
He threw a savage strike: smoke.
Lingyang tumbled, his face touching the ground for a brief moment. When he turned back the way he came, he noticed a red streak where his face had brushed the floor. He brought a hand to his cheek; it was soaked.
It occurred to him that his vision was completely drenched in red.
"I think that's enough from the two of you."
A cool voice sounded from behind him. Lingyang turned, but even the intensity of such a movement made him almost swoon. A tall, grey-haired man with glasses was holding Camellya by the chin with one hand. He flicked her eyes, and she didn't even blink. An array of vines seemed to form a cradle for her, its supports reaching up to the rafters and wrapping around the plum blossom poles.
"Damn, Cam – if you hadn't overclocked so many times, you'd be super dead by now. You're definitely getting locked in the med pod after this." The strange man turned towards Lingyang. "The name's Aalto. I'm sorry my compatriot caused you so much trouble – she tends to do that, but she is usually more restrained. You must have gotten her really worked up."
"Your… compatriot?" The word took a couple of seconds to sink in. "Wait!" Lingyang sank into his stance once again, but a hand landed on his shoulder. "Huh?"
Over Lingyang's shoulder was Jiyan. "That's enough, little soldier. The crowd noticed something was wrong when you started to fight. Aalto found out Camellya was here, and he found me to help restrain her, but it seems that won't be necessary. You held pretty well on your own."
"Little… soldier?" Lingyang shook his head and did not dwell on it. "What about my friends?"
Aalto answered. "I don't know who you're referring to, but Cam doesn't kill non-combatants. If Cam wanted something from them, they would at most get roughed up a bit."
It was beginning to come together. Camellya had found out about this phase of the play, interrogated the participants, and planned her entrance knowing that Lingyang would likely be the backup actor, and if he wasn't, then she wouldn't descend from the rafters. Camellya probably also lied to Master that she knew how to perform this play – the lie would become convincing once she showed her agility.
"Hey, you're not bad, little guy," Aalto said.
"Little… guy?"
"Excuse me – little friend, I mean. Say…" Aalto pulled a Blake Bloom from his vest and held it out to Lingyang. "We can always use people like you in the Black Shores. What do you say about joining us?"
Lingyang's gaze slowly floated to the Blake Bloom, then back to Aalto. Then once again to the Blake Bloom. Then he fainted from exhaustion and blood loss.
Epilogue
Lingyang woke up in a medical ward. No part of his body was exempt from frostbite, internal bleeding, and broking bones.
Jiang and Luhan visited him; it was good to know that they were safe. Master apologized for letting Camellya participate as the goddess in the play. Lingyang said he forgave him, but he'd rather not do that phase again for the foreseeable future. Master avidly agreed. The last phase – the Lion Dance – was less harsh than the second-to-last phase. It was kind of like how the Head Lion in a pride rarely hunted; rather, he mainly fought other Lions. The last phase was mostly ceremonial and culturally-based. It was a tradition Lingyang loved and wanted to perform as long as humanly possible.
A Blake Bloom rested on Lingyang's nightstand. He has been staring at it and letting his mind drift for hours.
"Join… the same organization as Camellya, huh." Lingyang thought out loud. "Pft. Noooooo way." Lingyang grabbed the Blake Bloom and put it in his pouch for safekeeping. When he got home, he would put it among his mementos. For all intents and purposes, it was now a memory to be looked back upon as Lingyang's most fierce battle – surpassing even the battle against the Ovathrax's forces – but it would always be a source of temptation for him.
Camellya held an undeniable magnetism. There was something mysterious about her – the way she carried herself, approached others. She had helped him reach new heights. Every time he looked at that flower, he would think of her. But then he'd think of his friends, and everybody who loved him and made him into the person he was today.
It was tempting to start a whole new adventure, but he wouldn't sacrifice the solidarity of the Lion Troupe for anything.
The summer sun beamed outside; it has been shining ever since 6am. The only worrisome thought left for Lingyang was the question of whether Master would ask him to train tomorrow.
A/N: Hope y'all enjoyed. Wuthering Waves has been my main thing since like May. Can't wait for 2.0. The Lingyang lore of when he awakened his forte is lightly adapted for the purpose of this story. Lastly, this is not a statement on whether Lingyang can actually fight to a tie with Camellya. Might edit this story later.
Edits:
- Minor rephrasing and word changes.
- Changed the length of the performance from five minutes to twenty minutes (the implication of the performance was that it contained varied and difficult stunts, and it is not very believable to squeeze all that in five minutes).