“We’re almost there,” announced Guang.

Valor was glad to hear it, after how long they’d been walking. Although the lake they’d been circling wasn’t very large – its far shore never being so distant as to be out of sight, which was probably why Spinner wasn’t freaking out about it – it had still taken them a considerable amount of time to reach the other side.

Had they been back on the plains that she’d grown up on, Valor knew they would have been able to make the journey in half the time. But the wilderness here wasn’t like back home. Instead of an endless expanse of flat ground, the terrain was rocky and uneven, the ground broken up by exposed rocks and hidden roots. The ground was made all the more treacherous by the ubiquitous snow drifts, often slowing their pace to a crawl.

When they’d left, the sun had been just past its zenith, hanging high overhead; now, it was far closer to the horizon.

Which means that even if this is a short meeting, we’ll probably be making at least part of the trip back in the dark, Valor knew.

While the area around the lake was far safer than the trip to the adlet village had been – unlike the monster-infested forest they’d had to fight their way through, the most dangerous creature they’d seen on their current expedition had been a half-starved raccoon, the sight of which had prompted Woodheart to give it most of her provisions before she’d been willing to move on – Valor wasn’t looking forward to having to navigate the treacherous wilderness in the pitch black.

Particularly with how irritable her traveling companions – the non-pony ones at least – had become.

“We need to stop before going any further,” announced Carnelia, a hard edge in her voice as she touched down. “I want to make some preparations in case this turns out to be a trap.”

“I already told you,” snapped Yuyan, her fur bristling in indignation. “Such preparations are unnecessary. Yen-Wang-Yeh is one of the most prestigious deities of the Celestial Bureaucracy. Any representative of his will behave honorably.”

Carnelia’s reply was an unladylike snort, stepping into her high heels before putting her blouse back on.

While Valor and her friends were all used to roughing it, it was clear that the same couldn’t be said for Carnelia and Yuyan.

Despite having volunteered to go along with Yuyan, the redhead had quickly started falling behind the rest of the group. With her tight skirt and high heels, she’d spent more time stumbling than actually walking, and had come dangerously close to falling on her face more than once. It had taken only about fifteen minutes for her patience to run out completely.

But rather than turn back – which had been what Valor and the other mares had expected her to do – Carnelia’s response to her inability to keep up with them had been to start taking her clothes off.

She’d stepped out of her shoes first, followed by unbuttoning and discarding her blouse in favor of the lacy red bra under it, and then undoing the bun she’d tied her hair back into, letting her butt-length crimson locks hang freely.

She’d just finished taking her glasses off, tucking them into the valley of her cleavage, when Shadow – the first to recover from her surprise at the redhead’s impromptu striptease – had asked Carnelia what she was doing.

“This,” had been Carnelia’s answer, at which point she’d unfurled a pair of black-feathered wings from her back which Valor was sure hadn’t been there before.

The redhead’s subsequent explanation had caused several minutes to be lost as Valor and her friends had a quick huddle in response to the fact that they were traveling with a literal devil.

Nor had she been the only one to change shape in response to the landscape, with Yuyan undergoing a much more dramatic alteration only a few minutes after they’d resumed walking.

While the vixen’s robes and wooden sandals weren’t quite as ill-suited for the terrain as the brachina’s – according to Carnelia, that was the kind of devil she was – they were still enough to cause her considerable difficulty. On more than one occasion her footwear required her to struggle to extract it from softer patches of ground, and the large sash keeping her robes closed meant that she could only take small, mincing steps, making Valor wonder how she’d rushed to the earlier conflict – the one which had brought them all together in the first place – so quickly.

She’d gotten her answer soon enough, however, when Yuyan had sighed and come to a stop.

“I must apologize to all of you,” she announced, her voice clipped. “It is undignified for a kumiho to return to her natural form in front of anyone who is not a clan member, a subordinate, or a very close friend.”

She’d set her jaw then, making sure not to look anyone in the eye. “However, as I’ve already burdened all of you with helping me resolve this problem, it would shame me to detain you further just so I could protect my pride. Since I can only alter my ki to conceal my presence for short periods of time – too short to make this journey – I ask that you forgive me for this breach of etiquette.”

And then, without further ado, the vixen had become an actual vixen.

Prior to that, Yuyan – just like Mei Li, and the other fox-girls who Valor was pretty sure were Yuyan’s daughters – had looked like one of the human women that could be seen in Viljatown and a few of the Pony Empire’s larger cities. Admittedly, those women didn’t have furry ears atop their heads, nor tails – let alone multiple tails – but she was still a biped like them.

But after her announcement, Yuyan had become an actual fox, unclad and barely larger than Littleknight – the almiraj providing a nice comparison by hopping closer to the fox, nose twitching inquisitively – with only her six tails to mark her as being any different from the local wildlife.

“I will slow us down no longer,” announced the fox, still refusing to look at any of them. “Let us be on our way.”

It was clear that neither Carnelia nor Yuyan was happy to have transformed, judging from the tense silence that had fallen after that. And despite Spinner’s repeated attempts to lighten the mood and get people talking – mostly by asking Guang what he could turn into, the qilin staunchly ignoring her – the oppressive atmosphere had endured for the entire trip.

And now it was all coming to a head.

“I told you before we left that His Highness put me in charge of making sure everyone was safe,” Carnelia – her wings once again gone – reminded them as she fixed her hair, easily winding the long tresses back into a bun. “Using protective magic before we go into an unknown situation is simple prudence.”

“I recall you admitting that I was the more refined servant of our lord before we left,” retorted Yuyan, changing back into her humanoid form and starting to fix her robes. “As such, allow me to instruct you on how armoring yourself before meeting someone is a declaration that they are untrustworthy in your eyes, insulting them before a word has been spoken.”

“I doubt a few protective enchantments will be what keeps your impoverished clan from having their debts forgiven,” shot back Carnelia, withdrawing her glasses from the valley of her chest and putting them back on.

Her expression stony, Yuyan bent at the waist to clean a spot of mud off of her wooden sandals, before deigning to look at the devil. “As I explained to you before, this is a simple misunderstanding. I can clear it up, but not if my own retinue undermines me.”

“I will go first and give notice of your arrival,” announced Guang. “Once you have finished arguing amongst yourselves, proceed straight ahead.”

“Aw, leaving so soon?” pouted Spinner, sidling up to the qilin. “I was hoping we could spend some more time getting to know each other before we had to part company.”

“I apologize for disappointing you, but the sooner I have seen this task through to completion, the sooner I can return to my duties,” announced Guang without so much as looking at her.

“You sure you aren’t due for a break? Maybe take a cue from the ladies and freshen up a bit? I could help you...and he’s gone,” sighed the bard as the qilin strode out of sight.

“It’s just as well,” huffed Shadow. “I’ll admit he was cute-”

“‘Cute’?” scoffed the bard, incredulous. “He was a dish and a half! And the way he bared it all, WOO! I don’t know about you, but I for one appreciated seeing some gratuitous male nudity for a change!”

That last part was uttered with a pointed glance at Woodheart, who rolled her eyes. “I don’t think ‘gratuitous’ is the right-”

“Like I said,” interrupted Shadow. “He was easy on the eyes, but I’ve had enough of guys doing the whole ‘dour due to duty’ schtick to last a lifetime.”

“C’mon, that’s overstating it,” countered Valor. “He went out of his way to clear a trail for us, and he warned us every time there was any sort of hazard up ahead.”

“It would have been nice if he’d talked to us a little more,” noted Woodheart. “I wanted to ask him if he had any insight into communicating with spirits, since he’s a messenger for a god of the dead.”

“I suspect that you would not have learned much.” Running her fingers through her hair before patting down the fur of her tails, Yuyan shook her head. “Qilins serve as...I suppose the term would be ‘field agents’ for the Celestial Bureaucracy as a whole, rather than acting as functionaries of specific gods. They are obligated to offer assistance to lawfully-appointed officers who show up in their territory, but that does not make them members of that god’s retinue.”

“Wait, so you mean he’s like a local sheriff who gets conscripted when one of the queen’s soldiers shows up and says they need someone to show them around?”

Yuyan paused in response to Spinner’s question before giving a hesitant nod. “I suppose that would be an apt comparison, yes.”

Woodheart frowned. “But if he’s a sheriff...where has he been up until now? I mean, we could have used the help when we were fighting Grisela and Paska and those other guys.”

“Politics, of course,” replied Carnelia, glancing over herself as she finished fixing her outfit. “Why do you think that pantheon has the word ‘bureaucracy’ – a form of government famous for being slow and inefficient – in its name? I’m guessing that qilin saw what was happening, decided that it was too much for him to handle on his own, and filed a request asking for assistance. Assuming he marked it as a high-priority emergency, it should only take a few years to be properly reviewed and answered.”

Valor couldn’t help but feel horrified at that. “You’re saying he stood back and let the ponies in that village Grisela was preying on be killed because he needed permission to help them?!”

“Do not be so quick to put stock in what a devil tells you about the gods,” replied Yuyan. “They are not known for their piety.”

“And yet you didn’t say she was lying,” observed Shadow.

Yuyan sighed. “A half-truth is not a lie. There are many stories of ministers serving the Celestial Bureaucracy who – being young or ambitious or simply foolish – decided to take action in response to some crisis completely on their own, without waiting for their superiors to answer them; indeed, sometimes without informing them at all. The result was that they made some blunder or misstep that caused the situation to grow even worse.”

She gestured at Valor and the other mares then. “Our lord has told you that he has fought several deities in the time he became a xianxia – a titan, in your words – has he not?”

Valor didn’t miss how Shadow winced slightly at that. “Yeah, he gave us the short version.”

“While I make no claim to understand the whole of my lord’s undertakings, I am certain that he is aware that these encounters will each have significant repercussions, not only for himself but for his pantheon. The consequences of which might very well impact the lives of many, in ways that we mortals cannot imagine.”

Finishing checking her robes over, she tightened her sash. “Had an agent of the Celestial Bureaucracy intervened recklessly, even in what looked to us to be an innocuous manner, those consequences might be far more dire than they are now. That is why – though it might seem callous at the time – a thoughtful and measured response usually does the most good for the most people.”

“And yet you’ve only been here a few hours, and already your pantheon is demanding that you pay off your debt,” noted Carnelia.

Yuyan straightened up at that, but didn’t look at the brachina, instead folding each of her hands in the opposite sleeve of her robe.

“I believe we’re finished here,” she announced. “And since there is no need for any protective measures to be undertaken, we can proceed.”

Without waiting for a reply, she stepped forward, following the same path that Guang had taken.

Author's Note

As personalities clash and tensions rise, Yuyan and the others finally arrive at where Guang’s boss is waiting!

Will the Pimao Jingzhi’s former matriarch be able to clear up the issue of her clan’s supposedly being in debt? Or will she, and Fail Forward, come to regret not letting Carnelia lay down some protective spells first?