The Second Archon War: Interlude 8

Interlude 8: In The Shadow of Giants

Clutching her small suitcase tightly, Ling kept her eyes on the scuffed linoleum floor of the interview room as she and her father sat tensely, waiting. There wasn’t much in the suitcase: two changes of clothes, a photo album, and the wooden spoon her grandmother had given her. That along with what was in her backpack, toiletries, a jacket, an apron, and extra socks and underwear, was all the worldly possessions she had left. 

“We already have the visas, what’s taking so long,” her father muttered nervously running his hands through his graying hair. He’d aged so much in the last year, while Ling and her family desperately tried to get out of Guangxi. 

Her mother hadn’t made it. She’d caught one of the many illnesses raging through the city before they’d managed to escape to Vietnam. If they’d had antibiotics, or even just clean water, she might have made it. As it was, she’d died of a fever and bloody flux, like so many thousands of others had. 

Now, it was just Ling and her father. They’d left everything behind, including their large house, their restaurants, and Ling’s favorite set of knives. But they had their lives, and that was enough for now. 

The door opened, and a bored looking official called, “Monsieur Mao and Mademoiselle Mao.” 

Ling hastily stood up, holding tight to her briefcase, nodding along with her father. “Yes, that’s us!” she said in her very best French. 

The official grimaced, then stepped inside. “So, you can speak French at least, even if your accent is horrible.”

That hurt, but Ling didn’t protest. She’d studied French her entire life, taught by the best of tutors from France itself. She did have an accent, but not much of one. 

Dressed in a cheap suit, the official slumped in the chair across from Ling and her father, paging through a clipboard. He looked up at them and sneered. “Sit down. I don’t want you hovering over me.”

“Of course, our apologies,” Ling’s father said in perfect Parisian French as they sat. He’d trained in the great kitchens of Paris as a young man, and had helped Ling with her studies. He had been the best chef in all of China, owning his own chain of restaurants that had locations in a dozen cities in China.

Now they were just another pair of destitute refugees. 

“Hmm. Chinese passports. These are no good. You should never have gotten Visas,” the official said, pointing to their CUI passport books. 

Ling’s heart flew up into her throat, but she hastily dug in her backpack for her new passport, as her father produced his Vietnamese one. It had cost nearly all of what money they’d had left to buy the passports and Visas from the Vietnamese government, and taken every last contact her father had. They had barely made it through the border at all: Vietnam was swarmed with refugees from China, and only their previous wealth and status had allowed Ling and her father to bribe their way through. 

The official glanced at the Vietnamese passports, then opened them up. Inside were carefully folded up francs, 500 in total. It was almost the absolute last of their money. Ling and her father both had some francs carefully sewn into their clothing, but barely enough to survive for more than a few days. 

“Well, these seem to be in order,” the official said, plucking out the money. He leered at Ling, who forced herself to smile back. “You’re a pretty one. If you need work, I might be able to introduce you to someone who has use for girls like you. Might make things easier for you.”

“We’ve already secured employment. My brother owns a restaurant, here in Paris,” her father said firmly, his voice barely restrained from rage. This wasn’t the first time someone had implied, or even outright said, things would go easier if Ling spread her legs. She’d avoided it, but a lot of women in her situation hadn’t. 

“Tch, Chinese food? What a waste, we have proper food here in France,” the official sneered. But he stamped their passports, and passed them back. “Welcome to France. See that you follow the law.”

Gratefully, Ling took her passport and hurried out. One last security screening, where she was patted down far more roughly than was necessary, and then she saw a blessedly familiar anxious face waiting for them. “Yu! Yu!” Ling called, waving anxiously at her cousin. 

“Xiangling! Uncle Mao!” Yu called, waving anxiously for them. She was dressed in ordinary looking clothes, her dark hair pulled back with a plastic hair ornament, but what Ling noticed was that while Yu looked worried, she didn’t have that haggard, haunted look so many of their fellow Chinese did these days. 

When the two cousins met, Ling wrapped her arms around Yu as tightly as she could, fighting back tears. At last, after nearly two years of fear and terror, it was over. 

“It’s OK, you’re safe now,” Yu whispered, her own tears wet on Ling’s shoulder. They laughed and separated, and Yu embraced Ling’s father as well. “It’s so good to see you, Uncle Mao. I
 I’m so sorry, when I heard what happened to Aunty
”

“Thank you,” her father said gruffly, wiping tears from his own eyes. “And how is my brother and your mother?”

Yu’s expression fell, and she looked like she was fighting back tears herself. Ling felt a dawning sense of horror. “Yu, what happened?”

“It’s
 come on. It’s been four months. I just
 I didn’t want to tell you,” Yu sniffed, picking up Ling’s bag. “You had enough to worry about.” 

“Yu! What happened!?” Ling asked, desperately grabbing her cousin’s arm. 

“It
 it was just a car crash. A drunk driver,” Yu said, sounding utterly exhausted. “Come on. This is supposed to be a happy day.”

With that ominous news, Ling trudged her way after Yu through the crowds at Charles De Gaulle Airport. She’d been here before, of course, but that had been ten years ago, before Leviathan, before the world had gone completely to hell. Now she could see not just heavily armed French Soldiers, but also uniformed capes patrolling the airport. They got stopped twice, but Yu talked their way out of the first one, and the second time gave the soldiers some francs before they were taken to a holding cell. 

“We didn’t have to bribe anyone the first time I was here,” Ling said dejectedly. 

“That was before the new government in 1998,” Yu said quietly. “The year the Blasphemies killed the President and his entire cabinet. Then they nearly burned Paris to the ground from the riots. It was bad. Still is. But there is order now, and we escaped the fascists.”

“I had heard it was bad, even in France, but
 you haven’t even been attacked by an Endbringer, or an Archon,” Mao pointed out. 

“Barbatos is friendly, mostly. I’ve got some of his CDs, they’re good,” Yu said as they hurried into the subway station. 

Ling noted they were getting a lot of nasty looks from the others waiting on the platform, and hastily switched to French from Cantonese. “I didn’t think The Tone Deaf Bards would be popular in France. Aren’t they German?”

“They are, but they won Eurovision, and they’ve been very popular since, even if they are German,” Yu explained. “Besides, Barbatos seems to have promised to protect France as well.”

“We don’t need the fucking Germans, France is strong on her own!” a young man with a number of tattoos and piercings said, glaring at Yu. 

“I would prefer to live without Archons or Endbringers,” Mao said firmly, clearly trying to agree with the man, but that just earned some more angry mutters. 

“Archons?” the man spat towards Ling, who had to step quickly to avoid it. “That for those so-called Archons! Barbatos is a drunk, the Shogun is a monster, and that little girl in the Middle East is the puppet of a butcher!” 

The part about the Shogun, Ling could only agree with, and she had heard that Barbados was utterly terrifying. As for Nahida, she didn’t know much, aside from that the girl had apparently fought the Simurgh, then caused a popular uprising. It was hard to care, really. To her, Archons were just a terrifying new kind of cape, or maybe just a humanoid Endbringer. The Shogun had certainly devastated China with her war, Barbatos had nearly caused a civil war in Germany, and Nahida had actually overthrown the government in her home nation. 

That made Ling very, very grateful there were no Archons in France. Let the monsters fight it out in other nations. Ling just wanted to be left alone in peace. 

The subway had more graffiti on it than Ling remembered on her last trip, and it was much dirtier too. The people looked generally miserable as well, though to Ling they also looked fatter and far less panicked and harried than anyone in China currently felt. The horror stories that Ling had heard from other refugees had been enough to dampen even her normally cheery attitude, and then her mother had died. It was hard to stay upbeat when the world was falling apart around you. 

After a long ride and several train switches, and several looks and touches by French men that were sadly all too common in crowded subways, they at last arrived at their destination. Yu led them up several flights of stairs and across several streets, through a section of the city that looked rundown to Ling, who commented as much to Yu.

“This is actually the nicer part. There’s just not as much money for road maintenance, or general upkeep. The city is still recovering from all the riots, and with cape battles every week, the Mousquetaires and the Gendarmerie don’t have as much time for low level crime. Combine that with all the cheap drugs that are going around, and it’s bad. Not as bad as it was before the Gesellschaft was put down, but bad,” Yu told them. 

“They were a problem here? I thought they were German,” Ling’s father commented, still speaking in French. They were getting enough disgusted looks for looking Chinese. Sounding it too seemed like a recipe for disaster. 

“They were, but they supported the Nouveau Parti Populaire Français, which was a fascist group. If Barbatos did one good thing, it was rooting them out. They collapsed shortly after the Concert of Munich,” Yu explained. 

“An Archon, doing good? Must have been an accident,” Ling’s father commented with a snort. 

Yu shrugged. “He’s not the Shogun. Here, this is the restaurant.”

Seeing the boarded-up windows, Ling’s heart sank. The sign was dark, and there was a notice that the building was closed. Yu led them inside, where dusty chairs were set atop dustier tables, and drooping decorations moldered. There was broken glass near one of the windows, with a brick still there. Ling stepped over and unfolded it to find a caricature of a Chinese man with bucked teeth and squinty eyes and “FOREIGNERS GO HOME” on it. 

“That’s been there for a month. I called the police, but they just came and told me to board up my windows,” Yu said bitterly. “Why should they care about me? I’m only half French.”

 Ling felt exhausted, but looked at her father, who seemed ready to drop dead. Taking a deep breath, she forced a smile on her face. “Well, we’re here now! So why don’t we make dinner like a family, like we used to?” 

“There are leftovers upstairs, and I’ve made up my parents’ old room for you, Uncle Mao. Ling, you and I will have to share my room,” Yu said tiredly. “I’m sure you’re tired from traveling.”

Ling’s father nodded his acceptance, and they all trooped up the back way to the apartments above. Dinner was warmed up onion soup from a restaurant with fresh bread and some fruit. It was good food, if not the best, and Ling actually felt reasonably safe for the first time in
 well, since the news that Raiden had declared war. Curse those fools in the Yangban who had ever thought they could take the tiger by the tail. 

Once the meal was over and the dishes cleared away, Ling took Yu’s hands in hers. “Yu
 tell us
 what happened to your parents?”

Tears spilled out of Yu’s eyes, and she tried to compose herself, scrubbing at her face. “It was just so sudden and random. Father and mother were just out for a walk. I was at a rehearsal, for a role that I thought I might actually get, a good one. Then
 then I got a phone call from the police. They’d been killed in a hit-and-run by a drunk driver. They caught the driver, he’s in jail, but
 but they’re just gone. I
 I closed the restaurant. There was an insurance payout, but I was never that good of a cook, and I just couldn’t
”

Yu broke down completely, and Ling wrapped her cousin in a tight hug. “It’s OK. I understand. Let it out. Let it all out.”

Ling looked at her father, hot tears trickling down his own face as he sat there like a lump, totally devoid of any passion. She knew what he was thinking: What was the point? His wife was dead, his brother was dead, and the restaurant was dead. They’d kept themselves going talking about the dishes they’d create, the crowds they’d draw, and the food they’d make together as a family. Like they used to.

That night, Ling lay in bed with Yu, her cousin snoring softly as she stared up at the ceiling, the noise of the city spilling in even through the closed window. She shivered against the chill fall air. Was this it? Was this where it all ended? She could get a job as a chef: she was very good, always had been. Even if she was Chinese, she could become at least a line cook, though she knew enough to be a sous chef or even a head chef at a good restaurant. 

She clenched her fists. No. Cooking was her life. Her passion. She was in Paris. Paris! The food capital of the world! Damn the Archons and Endbringers, there was work to be done, and food to make here!

By the time dawn came, Ling had cleaned up the entire kitchen. She didn’t bother with the front end of the restaurant yet, that wasn’t the point. She had found a market that was open early and purchased what she needed. She still had to get some rather novel ingredients, as proper Chinese food needed things that were rare in Paris, but she knew once she got some contacts she could find it. 

And so, Ling did what she did best: she cooked. The kitchen was a good one, even if it had been disused for long months, and all the right tools were there. There wasn’t a name for the recipe she created, not yet, but it was a fusion of her two greatest loves: Traditional Cantonese cooking, and French haute cuisine. She took her creation upstairs, and waited. 

She didn’t have to wait too long: her father was the first to stumble out of his bedroom, bleary-eyed, but clearly intrigued. “Something smells good. Where did you
?”

“I made it myself!” Ling said proudly, gesturing to the table. “The kitchen still works! The ingredients weren’t too expensive either, try some!” 

“I
 suppose so,” her father agreed, and sat down to sample some of the dishes. 

Yu was up next, coming in and blinking in surprise. “Uncle Mao, did you make all this?”

“It was Xiangling,” her father said. “Yu, please, you have to try some of this!”

Her cousin sat, trying a bit of one of the egg dishes, then smiled in approval. “This is good! What do you call it?”

“I haven’t come up with a name yet, but 100 Eggs in Red Wine Sauce is a good start!” Ling said happily, serving up some herself. “It’s good, isn’t it?”

They managed to eat and laugh together, sharing stories from days gone by of both Ling's mother and her uncle and aunt, who had met in Paris. Yu’s full name was Julie Mao Yu, though the French official hadn’t seemed to understand Mao was supposed to be her surname, and they’d never gotten it changed. She’d been born in China, but had French Citizenship and was a huge reason why Ling and her father had been able to emigrate. 

Once breakfast was over, Ling took her father and Yu’s hands in hers. “I know it looks bad now. We’ve lost so much to get to where we are now. But we can’t give up. We’re the Mao family! We cook! We can clean up the restaurant, and have a grand reopening in Uncle and Aunty’s honor. We make new dishes and old ones, and we show Paris just how incredible Cantonese cooking can be! Maybe we’ll never be rich and famous, but people can come to our restaurant for the best meal of their life! What do you say?”

“I was never much of a cook,” Yu said, blushing. “But
 I’m not much of an actress either. I suppose we can give it a try.”

“You’re a great actress! I know that once we get the restaurant up and running, the roles will just pour in for you!” Ling said. She knew it wasn’t logical, but right now what they needed was passion and optimism, not logic and defeatist attitudes. 

“It’s what Yanxiao and Maria would have wanted. And your mother, too,” her father said, wiping his eyes with his free hand. “Yes. Let’s do it.”

“Then this marks the grand reopening of Wanmin Restaurant!” Ling declared triumphantly, pulling her family to their feet. She led them down the stairs, then they got to work cleaning. 

This was what Ling was meant to do. No Archons, no Endbringers, no capes. Just her and her family, doing what they were made to do: Cook.

As her passion burned, Ling felt a faint echo. As if there was something that wasn’t there yet, but would be, one day. She dismissed it as the hollow feeling she got when she dwelled on everything she had lost, and threw herself into her work with reckless abandon, thinking only of new recipes and the cooking she’d do. 

Her passion burned bright, and one day, it would be recognized. 

“Dad, there’s something weird in the pasture.” 

Nick Campbell looked up from the truck he was repairing and frowned at his middle son. Sean was thirteen, and while he could be a hard worker, he was also a daydreamer who got distracted easily. Wiping his hands on his grease rag, he turned to Sean and frowned. 

“What do you mean, something weird in the pasture?”

Sean shrugged helplessly. “Something’s bothering the sheep, and one’s dead. There’s this weird plant there, and I had to fight off another slime. I killed it, but I never seen a slime kill a sheep before.” 

Nick grunted and looked up at the late afternoon sky. It was December 22nd, the longest day of the year. It had been 25C, not intolerably hot, but warm for Te Kuiti, New Zealand. “Killed sheep aren’t somethin’ weird. You should have led with that. Let me get my gun. Probably a dog.” 

After getting his rifle, Nick and Sean loaded up on a pair of quads and rode out to the south pasture, where the sheep were all huddled up near the gate and bleating worriedly. That was unusual, and bad. It was already getting dark, and Nick was worried about the animals. 

A short time later, Sean led his father to the remains of a dead sheep, illuminating it with his headlights. There wasn’t as much of a gory mess as Nick thought there would be, and no sign of a dog attack. What there was were several bulbous green growths latched on to the carcass, like some sort of weird plant growing out of the remains. 

“That wasn’t so big before,” Sean commented, pointing to the growths. “They were smaller. And I think there were only three. Now there’s four.”

“Hmm,” Nick commented. He got his gun out, checked it one more time, then said, “Stay back, and get ready.” 

Then he blasted one of the bulbs from 20 meters away. Nick was a good shot, having had plenty of experience in his years as a sheep rancher, and he hit the bulb about dead center. The thing didn’t explode, but it did fall off the carcass and spray a green ichor everywhere, which was satisfying. 

What wasn’t so satisfying was when the other three bulbs opened an eye, then floated up into the air. 

“Oh fuck me,” Nick growled, and worked the action on his rifle. He fired at a second bulb, which was knocked out of the air with another spray of green goo. Unfortunately, the other two released a puff of spores of some sort, then fired off bolts of green energy. 

“SEAN, GO!” Nick ordered, diving out of the way. His son fortunately didn’t argue, gunning the engine on his quad and racing off across the pasture. 

Nick wasn’t a combat veteran by any means, nor had he ever hunted anything more dangerous than a feral cow or pig. They could be a lot more deadly than people thought, but at the same time, they were just animals, and not particularly aggressive ones. Whatever the hell these things were, they kept after Nick, loosing more spores and firing more green bolts. 

Swearing loudly, Nick fired another shot, but this one went wild. He managed to scramble back on his quad and race away, only stopping when he caught up with Sean, who was doing the right thing and getting the sheep out of the paddock and into another pasture. 

“Dad, I recognize those things. We saw a video in school. They’re specters. Green ones,” Sean told his father. 

“Specters? They some sort of cape abomination?” Nick asked, looking behind him. No sign of the whatever they weres, but his heart was still pounding. He was too old for this shit. 

“Don’t know. Showed up first in Japan, then in Germany. Don’t really know why the fuckers are here now though,” Sean said with a shrug. 

Nick grunted, and thought fast. “Go call the police, and get your brothers. Fort up at the house with your mother and your little sister. Keep your guns handy.”

Sean nodded, looking pale. “And what’ll you do?”

“Bastards killed my sheep,” Nick growled. “And bullets kill them. I’ll sort this lot out, but you call the police anyway.”

Nick nodded hastily, then they got the rest of the sheep to another pasture, where the panicky animals quickly ran away to the far side. 

Then Nick hugged Sean, told the boy gruffly he loved him, and picked up his gun and stalked back to the South Pasture. He was a rancher, and those were his sheep. There was going to be hell to pay. 

The specters, if that’s what they were, were now hovering about the area, lazily circling the sheep carcass. Nick took his time circling around them, making sure that there wasn’t anything else, or more of them. It looked like it was just the two left. They didn’t seem to care about his flashlight, ignoring the beam as Nick played it back and forth over the monsters. 

So, slowly, calmly, Nick drew a bead on the first one. Then he blew it out of the sky. He was just drawing a bead on the second one when something hit him like a wave, and nearly knocked him off his feet.

NO!

Staggering, Nick looked around wildly. What the fuck had that been? He barely dodged out of the way of another green bolt, then forced himself to calm and lined up the shot. He blew the last specter out of the sky. Then he looked around the pasture, and scratched his head. He shivered, wondering why the temperature was dropping so fast. It should have been a warm night. 

Then he felt something cold and wet land on the back of his neck. Puzzled, Nick reached around. Rain? There wasn’t any rain in the forecast. He played his flashlight around, and his heart nearly stopped. It wasn’t raining.

It was snowing. On the first day of Summer. He’d seen weird weather before, but this
had it been the specters?

By the time Nick got back to the gate, it was practically a blizzard as the cold wind bit at him and snow pelted down. Drifts of the stuff were piling up, and Nick was shivering fiercely. He was panicking about his sheep now: they had been sheared just a few weeks ago to prepare for the summer heat, and this cold could kill them. He was just getting ready to try to herd them to the barn when a police car pulled up, and Officer Ataahua stepped out.

“Nick, you alright? They said there were monsters here.”

“Killed the monster, then it started snowing!” Nick called. “Where did this come from?”

“Don’t know, but I don’t think it was your monsters that did it, sounded like Dendro Specters from what Sean told me at your place,” Ataahua said. “We need to-”

There was a sound like a rushing freight train, and then both Nick and Officer Ataahua were knocked clean off their feet as the earth trembled and heaved as if in labor pains. The shaking went on for half a terrifying minute that felt like an eternity.  Not too far away, the sheep bleated in panic, and Nick heard a horrible grinding noise. When he staggered to his feet, his flashlight showed that half his flock disappeared into a deep crevice that had opened in the middle of his pasture. 

“It’s the end of the goddamn world,” Nick breathed, as the snow came down ever harder. He turned, expecting to see Ataahua dead or worse, but instead he watched as a cluster of snow formed together in a pale blue crystal that fell into the policeman’s hands. 

“Get back to your family,” Ataahua said, his tribal tattoos standing out on his face as they began to glow with a cold blue light. “This is a dark night. But someone has to defend the people of this town. Leave the sheep.”

“But-”

“Leave the sheep, Campbell! What’s more important, your animals or your family?” Ataahua barked, pulling his shotgun out of the boot of his car. 

Swallowing, Nick nodded, then ran back to his quad as the snow continued to swirl. He said a profanity laced prayer, as so many did around the world. Across the globe, as skies froze and the earth raged, the people cried out for love. 

But the one who heard them had naught but a Heart of Ice. 

Elogia Cinerosa

Next: Comoedia Glacialis  1

Author’s Note: 

TL;DR, the Cake is a Lie, you get a Villainess, not Water Jesus because Three Act Structure. 

So, I know a lot of you were expecting Furina. In my original notes, this is where Furina entered stage right. However, as time went on, I increasingly realized Furina wouldn’t work. This isn’t her fault, really. I had initially thought we’d get a Marie Antoinette type character who was a tyrant and a fool, and the story would be about liberating Fontaine from her reign of injustice. 

How wrong I was. Furina is, to be blunt, Water Jesus. There is absolutely not a single drop of malice in her body, and she’s both precious, and adorable, and I feel extremely bad for what I’m going to do to her in the story. 

That said, it left me with a distinct problem: I needed a villain. I needed someone to come to Earth Bet at the start of Act 2 and make things worse. In a three act structure, Act 1 is where your good guys get an initial victory. In this story, that’s the Archons pushing back against Scion and Cauldron’s evil schemes, and bringing more joy and brightness to the world. There are bumps along the way, but things are getting much, much better for everyone. Two Endbringers are dead, and three Archons are planning to save the world. 

That’s Act 1 though, and that came to an end with Nahida. While something this big and sprawling doesn’t slavishly adhere to the Three Act Structure, such a framework is still very important from a storytelling perspective. And so, I need someone to come in during Act II and undo a lot of the progress that has been made, while creating a large number of  new problems that shakes up the status quo. Because that’s good story telling: things get boring if the good guys just have a steady progression of mostly unmitigated victories (poor China aside). 

Thus, I could not have the mid point Archon be selfless, noble Furina, who would willingly die for the sins of France, or the world in general, with a smile on her face and a wink at the audience. No, I needed a story book villain. An icy queen with a frozen heart, an army of terrifying faceless minions, and a squad of deadly minibosses who are each in and of themselves enough to check even an Archon. 

So, instead, we get the Tsaritsa. This does present some problems. We do know a lot about the Tsaritsa, more than any other Archon before their region debuts. But her own debut is a good 15-16 months away, and you can tack on another 4-5 months after that to resolve most of her region’s plot lines and we actually learn what makes her tick. 

So, I’m going to be making up Dantilion from whole cloth. I gave myself an out, as Nahida mentioned, she knows of the canon Tsaritsa, who is not Dantilion, the character this fic uses. This is a multiverse story, so there are alternate versions. I know this will still be disappointing to many, and a huge departure from what’s happened up to this point. 

Still, I hope you all enjoy as we head into the Frozen North, and the Reign of the Tsaritsa begins. 

GLORY TO SNEZHNAYA! GLORY TO OUR ETERNAL QUEEN! GLORY, TO THE TSARITSA! 

October: Yeah
 woo
 whatever
 I’m disappointed, Paragon! You promised me my favorite Archon, ma jolie, and then you pulled the rug out from under me for just another Bronya! How dare!

Cog: Come to the story for the cute gods and the villain butt-kicking, stay for the political worldbuilding!