Prince Gyllen Ch. 21

Persevering ever eastward, the Killer Kraken voyaged, calling to ports in countries thousands of miles beyond realms even Min had ever roamed during her shipfaring tenure in the past, journeying to the outermost edges of the charted world towards the Land of Jade and Silk: the proud, militaristic nation of Yanchu, once a chaotic collective of mighty warring states in the ancient world since unified under a singular banner by a royal dynasty with roots reaching far into the age of myth, and now considered the preeminent superpower of the eastern continent second only to the colossal Pavlovan Empire that bridges the landmasses of Occassus and Purvaja along the north.

Upon landing in the province of Xuxian, Gyllen rented a single horse for him and Min to share (Min being small enough that she could easily fit onto the saddle alongside the human), believing it would be the simplest mode of travel for them to take onto the slopes of Pachong Heights, a rural region of lofty hills where their next engagement resided. En route on their expedition, Gyllen and Min stopped by an open-air, roadside restaurant in a small, country town for a spot of lunch. The sun was shining high, but with enough fluffy clouds drifting through the azure sky and a gentle breeze rustling through the trees to offset the heat, the perfect backdrop to have an outdoor meal to.

"So...uh...run by me again how yer s'pose to use these exactly?" Min inquired to Gyllen as they sat on opposite sides of a small, square table while she struggled coming to terms with chopsticks, east Purvaja's equivalent to cutlery, as the noodles in her soup slipped between the utensils the very moment she attempted to lift any.

"Look, you're overthinking things. Simply hold the top one as you would a pencil, rest the other by your thumb and on your ring finger and then pinch them together on whatever it is you're aiming to eat, like so." Gyllen demonstrated by effortlessly catching a slice of cabbage between the twigs before quickly lifting the leafy vegetable up and into his mouth. Of course, Gyllen had the advantage of being educated in a wide variety of etiquette from an early age, and dining with the oriental apparatus was like second nature for him.

"Ah, screw it!" Min quickly conceded after her umpteenth try to consume anything from out the broth, throwing the sticks to the side before grabbing the bowl by its base and tipping it over to her lips, noisily slurping down a mouthful of doughy strings, meat and greens that turned a few heads from the neighbouring tables, much to Gyllen's second-hand embarrassment. "Mmm~! Not bad!" Min commented after bringing the vessel back down, smacking her lips together in a manner that temporarily put the prince off his snack for the next few minutes.

During this intermission, the boy took the time to take in the local vicinity, fascinated by the architecture of even the simplest of buildings with the cylindrical tiles and wide, curved eaves of their roofs, the timber frames separating their stone walls, and the intricate lattices that made up their windows and doors. Men and women alike went about their business outfitted in loose-fitting garbs - primarily robes - wearing either sandals or slippers upon their feet and the occasional conical, straw hat upon their head, and those with longer hair usually had it tied up to some degree in ways that were rarely duplicated.

Occasionally, a soldier or a mercenary would pass by decked in mail made up of small, square cuts of stiff leather studded together with bolts of iron, resting either a spear on their shoulder or a sheathed sword by their hips, the blades of both types elegantly curving, and at one point, Gyllen even espied a couple riding a cart being pulled along the street by another man on foot! The overall atmosphere, for as mundane as it was, was unlike anything the Snjórlander had ever observed outside of illustrations in encyclopaedias and travelogues, as if he had stepped forth into another world that was at once both familiar yet entirely alien. However, Gyllen was unable to ignore the fact that many of the passing natives eyeballed him with partial curiosity, partial surprise, muttering things to one another in secret, though a single word was oft repeated within their whispers...

"Oi, Gyl, what does 'guizi' mean?" Min naïvely inquired, "You speak Yanchun, yeah? I've been hearin' people say it non-stop since we got here."

"O-oh, um...i-it's simply a term used to...denote foreigners...yes, that's it." Gyllen stammered out his answer, while not technically incorrect, he left out many of the connotations associated with that particular phrase. "I knew Occassusians were seldom seen in this part of the world, but I did not think it would get to the point where people would stop and stare..."

"Well, jus' take a look at th' people here, Prince Pussy!" Min said. "With yer golden, girly locks; big, blue eyes an' long nose, ya stick out like a pube in puddin'!"

"My nose is not long!" Gyllen responded to the blunt remark, completely offended though still taking a brief moment to check by touching his nose in relation to the rest of his face before shaking his head and disregarding the whole thing altogether. Even still, there was a certain degree of truth to the goblin's observation, as the black hair, dark eyes and subtly beige skin characteristic to east Purvajans certainly made the blond prince appear as an oddity within their midsts, and that was even before considering his western, but still obviously grand, sense of style. "Besides, that's coming from the three-foot tall woman with green skin, red hair and pointed ears!"

"Oooh, touchy, touchy~" Min chortled. "Ya get non-humans all over th' world, don' ya? I'm sure most folk here have come across things much weirder than just a li'l gobbo once or twice in their lives, but seein' another human look as exotic as you? Well, that'd be a conversation piece a hella lot more interestin' down by th' dart boards later tonight."

Once their luncheon had concluded, the pair of tourists resumed their journey, galloping through wide-open fields before soon finding themselves lost amongst ridges they presumed to be Pachong, the lush green grass that carpeted the landscape neath the horse's hooves now given way to arid, yellow rocks and dirt as they cautiously made their way over precipitous pathways winding around the rises and bridging inclines, with an occasional shrub sprouting on the wayside or a small branch projecting from between cracks in the sides of the crags to add some verdure to the monotonous terrain.

Eventually, Gyllen and Min scaled one particularly sizeable hillock to its summit, arriving upon a flat plateau where a grove of towering bamboo stalks thrived around the outer perimeter, cordoned off with a wooden fence from a cylindrical pagoda rising even higher towards the heavens in the centre, its cream-coloured walls separated into nine distinct tiers by eaves of deep blue tiles, leaving a singular, narrow opening in the barrier for exit and entry starting from where the path came up from over the edge. Gyllen and Min dismounted close to where the enclosure began to widen, the prince hitching the equine to the railing before they began to approach the tower on foot as it stood still and silent almost sinisterly so, its long shadow stretching all the way to the hilltop's brink at an angle just to the left of where the two travellers drew closer.

"Cheery spot, ain't it?" Min sarcastically observed as she looked at the pagoda from its stonework foundations all the way to its roof tapering to a sharp point several stories above. "Who the hell even splurges on a place out in the middle of nowhere like this anyway?"

"A one Ms. Bai Suzhen." Gyllen answered without missing a beat. "She's the elective official governor of the entire Xuxian Province. The first non-human in Yanchu to ever be voted into office, I might add. Isn't that interesting?" He added, a tinge of excitement present in his tone.

"Ah, cripes, a politician? I knew I shoulda asked first 'fore taggin' along. else I wouldn' have came..." Min griped, shoving her hands into her pockets and kicking away a pebble in a huff just as the pair came up to the porch of the pagoda and the set of heavy double doors which constituted its entrance, motifs of lotus flowers carved into the mahogany they were crafted from. "So...ya think anyone's home?"

Gyllen did not reply, being far too occupied seeking a way to let their presence be known to the occupants, as their approach had apparently failed to be noticed, nor did he think any feeble attempt at knocking was about to be heard past the dense wood of the doors. Fortunately, the blond soon espied a velvet rope hanging from a hole just to the side of the door's frame, its end tied into a knot. Presuming its function, the blond then reached over and grasped the cord, giving it a sharp, downwards tug to pull more of its length from out its aperture as the dull knell of a great bell could be heard resounding from within. Upon releasing the rope and letting it recoil back into the hollow, Gyllen then took a step back to stand aside his goblin companion as the two waited for the call to be answered, but only an uncomfortable intermission of complete stillness was to follow.

Gyllen and Min then turned to one another in quiet uncertainty, both only communicating through a nonplussed shrug each, the prince contemplating giving the doorbell a second ring in case, somehow, the first peal went unheard. However, in that very instant, a thunderous crash suddenly boomed behind the prince and the goblin that shattered the placidity of the hilltop, naturally causing both of them to flinch before wheeling around to see what on Midgard could have caused such a terrific explosion. At first, all they could perceive was a cloud of dirt kicked up by the mighty impact of whatever it is was that had just landed to the ground, as well as startled birds that had been hiding amongst the bamboo fleeing through the air from the clap of terrestrial thunder in all directions of the compass.

Slowly, the mist of dust began to disperse and the Snjórlanders were able to distinguish two distinct, titanic silhouettes that stood imposing over either of the travellers, and soon thereafter, once the haze had substantially fallen, the pair were able to at last fully discern the apparent perils. To the left stood a minotaur male, tall even by the standards of the species, his brown hair and scruffy beard shaggy and wild, perfectly complimenting his bronze face which seemed to perfectly encapsulate the fury of a feral bull moreso than what was typical of his ilk, not helped by the fierce looking trident which he brandished in his hands and the large horns protruding from either side of his cranium and curving inwards like mirrored crescent moons purposely filed into a honed spike.

On the right was a centaur man poised even taller than the minotaur upon the body of a sturdy stallion with a sleek coat of black and gold, his humanoid torso equally strapping as it sprouted from where a horse's head would have otherwise been situated, possessing long, dark, straight tresses partially tied with a single topknot at the back of his skull which made him appear more civilised compared to his bovine associate at a glance, but his lour shewed an equal, if not greater, intensity, further emphasised by his wielding of a brutal, long-hafted morningstar.

The two beastmen were clad in cuirasses, vambraces and faulds of black steel, nicked and chipped all over as if they had witnessed an age of warfare. In addition, the minotaur wore a pair of sanguine trews tucked into a pair of scuffed sabatons that reached halfway up his brawny shins while the barrel of the centaur's lower, equine half was covered in a caparison of scaled armour reaching midway down his powerful thighs. Both had adopted battle-ready stances as they each stared down the duo of defenceless foreigners in their menacing sights, Min stunned speechless while Gyllen quivered from terror. However, before either of the warriors could make the first strike, the human and the goblin then heard the entrance behind finally fling far apart with a clatter, followed by an unknown woman's voice issuing forth a severe command in the Yanchun language from the open portal:

"Enough! Stand down, Niu-t'ou, Ma-mien!"

Immediately, the minotaur and the centaur both brought their polearms upright and struck the headless ends into the ground beside them before each dropping down to genuflect in direction of where the order had been declared, their heads solemnly bowed. Once again, Gyllen and Min turned themselves around in order to see the manner of the one capable of holding authority over such brutes as these, half-expecting to find nothing short of an abhorrent daemon glowering at them from the shadows within the tower to instead behold the form of a fairly frail, but tall, female situated majestically within the doorframe.

Of her appearance, the first feature to shock either of the Snjórlanders was the near-utter lack of pigmentation to be found anywhere on her person. From her silky hair to her porcelain skin to even her sense of flowing dress, almost everything was as unsullied white as virgin snow atop the highest mountain peaks. The only other shade the two were able to find on the woman were the golden hair clasp she used to keep her colourless locks in place, and her eyeballs, pure black orbs within their sockets without distinction between pupil, iris or scalera, somewhat unsettling the two travellers in contrast to the rest of her face, at once both youthful and dignified combining to create a countenance of otherworldly gorgeousness that left Gyllen and Min mesmerised from a glance alone.

"Ah, Prince Gyllen, we meet at long last~" The pale woman's long, thin lips took on a congenial smile as she looked down upon the blond.

"L-lady Suzhen?" Gyllen stuttered out the name he suspected belonged to the unfamiliar female, still shaken from the shockwave made by the pair of thugs currently kneeling in his blindspot, to which she nodded in confirmation. "Oh, 'tis an honour to finally come face-to-face with Your Eminence!" The boy made a slight bow, maintaining an outward composure, but in truth ecstatic over encountering the one whose administrative career he had been following for quite some time now. With his gaze dropped, the boy also had an opportunity to glimpse at her lower half: in place of where a pair of legs would have been on a human, a single massive, reptilian tail trailing out from underneath her elegant gown kept the governor upright and winded off along the floor far into the room behind for an estimated twenty feet! The appendage was covered tip-to-tip in small, diamond-shaped scales in an orderly arrangement except for its underside, which instead displayed broader, rectangular scales running horizontal across the space between her sides, all of it as glowing white as the rest of her anatomy. This attribute indeed asserted Bai Suzhen was a member of a partially-serpentine race known by as many names throughout the world in places where significant populations could be found; lamiae in Graecia, nagas in Jambudvipa, or nüwa as they were most commonly dubbed in Yanchu.

"My, after living with nobody but those two ruffians for these many long months, I had almost forgotten what manners looked like~" Suzhen chortled, unfolding a tasselled strawberry blossom paper fan in her right hand and fluttering it over her smile as if to hide her mirth.

"Um, forgive me for asking but...who exactly are those two...?" Gyllen meekly asked, checking over his shoulder to make sure the pair he was referring to were still in the same posture when he last looked.

"Why, they are my bodyguards, of course! Assigned to me upon recommendation straight from the Minister of Defence himself the very day I was formally inaugurated into office." She answered. "I suppose I shouldn't be too critical of them though. They perform their duties diligently enough, even if I've had no thieves or assassins on my doorstep since they have been put in my charge. As soon as you rang that bell, they could not help but fly off at the mere thought of fending off potential trespassers. Almost literally too! I believe that was the third floor they leapt from in their attempt at an ambush..."

"I-I see..." Gyllen swallowed nervously, dreading to speculate what would have become of him and Min had Ms. Suzhen intervened but a few seconds later than when she had. "W-well...at the very least, they're undoubtedly dedicated to their post..."

"True, true..." Suzhen mused. "But let's not dwandle out here any longer. How would you and your companion like to join me for a discussion over a pot of tea? I had some especially choice leaves delivered just this morning."

"Oh, we'd be delighted to, of course!" Gyllen instantly perked up with a beaming expression.

"Eh, speak for yerself, Goldie." Min interjected.

"You're not coming inside?" The prince turned to ask her.

"Nah. Trust me, I'd only get more bored if I came with ya." The goblin answered.

"M-Min!" Gyllen snapped, shocked by her blunt statement before the Xuxian governor herself.

"You may do as you please." Suzhen then spoke, not appearing wholly offended by the redhead's demeanour, but not amused by it at the same time. "Though I should inform you Niu-t'ou and Ma-mien are not exactly versed in hospitableness. Come, Prince." Without waiting for an opportunity for Min to reconsider, the nüwa shifted her upper body to the side to allow enough space for Gyllen's entry into the tower. Just before he would walk through the doorframe, the prince cast another quick glance to the goblin girl just to be absolutely sure she did not have a change of mind only to be greeted by the taunting wave of a green hand bidding him an insincere au revoir before he had the chance to get another word out, making the blond suck on his lip in bothered silence before facing forward once again and moving past the Yanchun snake-woman, who in turn then clattered the mahogany doors closed once more.

In the same moment when Suzhen left her sight, Min's pointed ears picked up on the mild clattering of armour and arms occurring behind her. Looking over her shoulder, the goblin saw the centaur and the minotaur had at last lifted themselves up from the ground and were now making their way closer towards where she stood with deliberate, heavy steps. Subconscious panic as to what their purpose behind their advance could have signified caused Min's heart rate to exponentially rise, but just as quickly subsided when she saw they were merely taking position on either side of the single step which led up onto the porch to stand sentry over the entrance to their mistresses' abode like stalwart statues of guardian deities, looking out onto the solitary path which led to the tableland.

Seeing now that they posed little danger to her, Min hopped down into the space between the two behemoths, appearing and feeling even more miniscule compared to their enormous builds than she had by Gyllen's side, now able to truly appreciate each of the watchmen's massive statures upclose, never before in all her worldly experience encountering beings of such immense size and brawn outside of those who claimed to have the blood of giants running through their veins, and even then, these two outclassed a few of those cases by quite the margin. In awe, Min cautiously took a few upwards peeks to their heads, though her scrutiny went virtually unnoticed as if the goblin's presence was hardly worth their vigilance now that it had been established she was not after their mistress' life nor valuables.

It did not take long before Min resigned herself to seating down onto the singular step, stooping her back to put her chin in her hands and her elbows on her knees as she rapidly succumbed to the boredom she had so dreaded from a lack of foresight. Her means of keeping her mind diverted were limited to studying the shapes clouds would take as they floated up above, with the occasional jay flitting through the air to break the monotony, or counting ants marching over the earth down below. The faint whistle of a gentle breeze rustling through the leaves of the bamboo plants only served to enhance the otherwise soundless atmosphere as a part of Min began to regret not taking the nüwa up on her offer of coming inside when she had the chance just as an alternative to alleviate some of the dullness.