Yrsillar Wrote:Today, there were only two others with her, young graduates of the Gold Autumn School, which specialized in spiritual affairs. They were only first realms, but they had endured the longest in the cloying pressure of her mist, and so, they were to be the first dedicated priests of Lake Snowblossom. They would be responsible for the day-to-day duties and upkeep of the shrine, and they were coming to experience the god they would mediate for in person.

She would have to keep them safe. Snowblossom wouldn't mean to hurt them, but like a child with a porcelain doll, she very easily could.

Both were dressed in robes that took on hues of blue, layered and embroidered to resemble gentle ripples and flowing currents. Each bore a treated wooden torch in one hand, held on the side facing the outer edge of the boat. The reagents applied to the burning ends made the torches burn a pale and ghostly blue. Both were young men, which was to say, they were only three or five years her senior. They were putting on brave faces.

Distance began to stretch, and the sight of the swarm of flickering firefly lights began to distort and dance behind them, the shore seeming to grow further away far faster than their boat was moving. The air rippled, and Ling Qi tasted lakewater on her tongue. Her qi flared, and she wrapped their boat in her own spirit as easily as breathing. She did so carefully, a net to filter, not a blade to strike or a shield to defy the powerful spirit.

When the world rippled and they sailed on now through through a copse of water weed whose strands stretched far out of sight above and below, her companions did not drown, though the two of them shivered, no doubt tasting cold moisture in the dense and cloying air that was left inside the thin veil she had made. Their boat sailed on, a tiny marble of pale mist in the depths of the lake. The torches burned brightly, reflecting off the scales of vast schools of fish that drifted cloudlike through their surroundings.

"O great lake, daughter of the distant glacier for whom ice itself blooms, who has accepted the name Snowblossom, as spoken in mortal tongues, and who has generously slaked our thirst and fed our bellies," Ling Qi intoned, pulsing her qi to draw attention, limning herself in silvery radiance. She gazed up into the dark and serene waters around them, and felt something stirring. "We, the people of your shore, come to you now to speak and to know."

Quote:One of those absurdly acronymed US government agencies contacts the League to help rescue a kidnapped child, lest her father be pressured into spilling important national secrets. Luckily, Green Lantern eagerly takes the case and is sure to see everyone’s returned safely!

None of these statements are true.

---

Notes:
CW: Weapons directed at a child. Mind the story rating, however.

See the end of the chapter for more notes.

Thanks to NMaiz for a neat letter and a cool mystery for Hermione to investigate! Check the comments from Chapter 86 The Turtles Take Manhattan! for all the backstory they put together for this mission.

Mr_Crocodile Wrote:The Skulldevil and his fated sibling have ideas whispered into their ears...

Thoughs of crushed moths and filled bellies...

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Notes:
After last chapter's focus on Wrangler's shenanigans, we return to our real main characters, Beau & Rong!

See the end of the chapter for more notes.

So, Rong and Beau are causing trouble over at the lands of the Cult of the Moth, thus giving you all readers an update on said cult's ongoings (The priestess in this chapter even is a grown-up MC from one of this antholy's first stories!). On top of that, I did go back to a couple of those old Mothra-centric stories to give them a rewrite to bring up the quality and update them to current OtSoT lore.

As for this chater, I just hope it was a cool exploration of what the Ramaraki actually are all about whenever they aren't killing people :p

Dr. Zyn ch'Mordan Wrote:Intel found some Romulan news reports about us. They say the Devil Fish can only have been recruited from jails or insane asylums for their bloodlust! I’d say they got that one right! – Colonel Balthazar Edison


In the 22nd Century, the Solomon Belt lay on the edge of explored space. While it now forms one of the western tributaries to the vital Bolarus-to-Barolia trade corridor that forms the backbone of the Federation economy, at the time it was a relatively calm area of subspace that supported Tellarite traders plying their wares to the Andorian Empire.(fn1) In between lay several warp-capable civilizations that had not yet expanded beyond their home systems. Some of these worlds – like Tarkalea and Benzar – had remained largely neutral to this point.(fn2) The Tarkaleans lacked for little at this point, having developed an early version of matter replication technology in the early 2150s. The Benzites had little use for off-world trade. Very few goods or foodstuffs could survive the heavily chlorinated atmosphere of Benzar. Moreover, it would be the better part of a century before they developed the diffusion rebreather technology that would allow them to survive in the standard nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere of most Minshara-class worlds. Before that, few Benzites left their world; those that did could only do so wearing sealed suits.

(...)

Balthazar Edison, a cut so deep you might need stitches.

Of all the MACO commanders to make a name for themselves during the war, few were as famous – or infamous – as Colonel Balthazar Edison, leader of the 31st MACO Expeditionary Unit, the first unit chosen to head into the Bear tunnels.(fn25) Born in Murrysville, Pennsylvania to parents who immigrated from the United Kingdom, Edison joined the MACO Corps in 2137 after graduating from a joint program at Starfleet Academy and Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. The late 2130s were a period of great optimism about Earth’s expanding reach into the stars, as the Warp 5 program was just beginning to bear fruit. Edison knew as well as anyone that that expanded reach would require men and women to defend the Earth and her interests against the cold, hostile vacuum of space and the aliens out there that might do Earth harm. His unit was one of the first called upon to provide disaster relief when the Xindi probe attacked in 2153.

Edison was on the short list of MACO officers provided to then-Captain Archer to lead the platoon that would accompany him on the punitive expedition into the Delphic Expanse.(fn26) Though Archer ultimately decided to take Major (Jeremiah) Hayes, Edison was made the executive officer of the 22nd MACO Expeditionary Unit under Colonel Terrence Ginwald.(fn27) The unit was forward deployed to the Sirius colony in case of a Xindi assault. While the Xindi never attacked the colony, it suffered several attacks from Nausicaan pirates. Edison gained a reputation as a soldier’s soldier, winning three separate engagements against superior numbers of Nausicaan pirates. His men said he was a stern but fair disciplinarian, and never asked them to carry any burden he was unwilling to carry himself.

A little over four years later, Colonel Edison found himself on the sharp end of the spear, now in command of the 31st MACO Expeditionary Unit.(fn28) If the Tellarite’s job was to seal the spaceports and prevent the Romulans from escaping, his role would be to push the Romulans deeper into the tunnels where they could not escape. He would destroy the fuel, ammunition and food that was collected at this base to be given to the Romulan ships heading to Denobula and grab any information that could be used by Starfleet Intelligence that could bring the war to an end more swiftly. He did not think such a task could be done easily, but he would see it done.

Footnotes.

1. Rogal nar Torg, Trade in the Tellarite Republics (Telemachus Press, February 2273).
2. Kryn sh’Voltan, Nonaligned Species of the Pre-Federation Era (University of Lor’vela Press, November 2284).
(...)
25. Elliot Lewis, The One the Romulans Feared: The Life of Balthazar Edison, Pennsylvania State University Press, October 2190.
26. Special Operations Division, Military Assault Command Operations, MACO Staff Recommendations for Punitive Expedition into Delphic Expanse, (Jacksonville, NC; May 2, 2153).
27. Starfleet Bureau of Personnel, Service Record – Edison, Balthazar M., (Oakland, CA; May 2164. Accessed May 2192).
28. Lewis.

Yrsillar Wrote:Ling Qi knelt at the prow of the barge, Qiyi's silk pooled around her legs. She felt a small trickle of wetness on her upper lip and tasted the coppery scent of blood. Yet her mind's eyes were far from the still frail shell of her mortal body. She could see the lights, all the flickering lights reflected on the water, bobbing with the serene rippling of the waters.

By definition, a community required exclusion. It was required that there would be those inside and outside of it for the concept to have any meaning. This, she had seen in the stagnant waters boiling under the general’s blade, and this, she knew that she could not deny. But she refused to accept those terms as primary. Lights could drift away, bonds could thin and snap, and new roots could curl out and bind themselves to others.

Refusing to rely on exclusion made it so much harder to form a strong community, but there were many hard acts which were worth doing. She refused the path of Still Waters Deeping and the All-Consuming Crucible alike. Kinship was not only blood. Community was not tradition alone. It was a continuous act, requiring choices and motion from many minds, in harmony and not, pushing forward something greater than any one person.

And now, a hundred, hundred tenuous links reached out from the lake to the people on the shore. As Snowblossom did right by them, so, too, would they need to do right by her.

Yrsillar Wrote:Ling Qi drew a small glass bottle from her storage ring. It was only a finger’s length long, but filled with foggy mist with a small amount of clear and sparkling water at the bottom. "As you suggested, my lady, we looked into the cultivation materials first, in case they represented any unintentional danger toward the citizens. Together with Meng Duyi, I discovered this material. We are calling it Clearwater Mist, and it is generated from the mist created when the main falls strike the surface of the lake. However, the mist only gains special properties at the exact hour surrounding daybreak and sunset."

"Interesting!" Gan Guangli peered at the bottle held in her hands. "It has a bit of the same scent about it as your muse, no?"

"It has some small properties of dreaming qi. Meng Duyi said it would be quite potent as a reagent in crafting cultivator-grade alcohols, in addition to being useful for alchemy in general, as a base for separating and distilling the essence of mixed reagents."

Xia Lin narrowed her eyes. "The reason you used expensive glass cleansed of all residual fire qi instead of ceramic is that, isn't it?"

Ling Qi nodded in acknowledgment. "It is very difficult to bottle. If the container has more than a single qi alignment, the mist will break it down over time. In addition, the material does not like to stay in liquid form and very easily becomes mist at the slightest disturbance, requiring firm sealing methods."

"Noted." The brush and paper that had appeared before Cai Renxiang was already being put to use. "Any danger to our construction?"

"We will need to make a small adjustment to the maintenance wards, but the breakdown effect is most potent when the mist is contained like this. Meng Duyi has already drawn us up some notes for the adjustment."

"Excellent. I will have them copied and distributed to the work crews by evening." Cai Renxiang made a note. "We will consider plans for how to gather the mist at an effective cost. Is it toxic to mortals?"

"It would only be toxic if they remained immersed in it for some time. For the single hour in which it naturally exists? No."