2 In War Speed Is Paramount

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兵貴神速
bīng guì shénsù
To soldiers speed is godlike.
In war it's speed that counts.

*~*~*~*~*~*

At first the pain was too raw. I woke at night, trapped in my new strange form, and remembered what I had lost. It felt as if the grief left in its wake would drown me, or tear me apart. My power, my freedom, my pride, taken from me, and in the empty shell left behind, nothing.

Hand in hand with the pain came anger, hot and fierce. I was angry, not just at that golden bastard Yan and the other four, but at every living creature that moved and breathed and lived their lives, oblivious to the fact that a fallen god walked among them.

Why I hated, I wasn't sure. When I had been a god I had rejoiced in the ability to assume human shape and walk among them. The irony of it had amused me, knowing as I milled through crowded markets and lively tea houses, I could destroy any one of the weak creatures that jostled against me with a twitch of my fingers. Now, trapped as one of them, I felt furious, indignant, insulted. I started to forget how it felt to be me.

For many years my fury continued to consume me, as if it was an instinctive reaction, an attempt by my mind to fill the hole left by my loss. Of course, I didn't rage aimlessly. I tried to channel my anger to purpose. I schemed, inciting rebellions, subverting officials, and causing general chaos as was my specialty. But all of my small rebellions were swiftly quashed out by one of The Five. Baihu continued to howl for my death, but the other four were indifferent. As I was now, I was no longer a threat. They treated my attempts at revenge like the tantrums of an angry child, which cut deeper than the worst of punishments could. They knew there was nothing I could do.

After a few decades I gave up on revenge and left the central regions. I had never much cared for the north, being too dry and barren as well as landlocked. To the south, rain and greenery and a beautiful blue ocean beckoned me, but to be honest, despite Baihu's constant death threats, Zhu, or the Red Duke as he was know to his devoted followers, had always unnerved me the most of The Five. His cunning and skill at intrigue was legendary. There was a reason he had survived so many dynasties.

Obviously I couldn't go west. I could almost imagine Baihu pacing along the borders of her territory, waiting for me to stray within her lands so she could finally sink her teeth into my soft fleshy form. My enforced immortality would only facilitate her revenge. She could torture me for all eternity, and in my weak yet indestructible human body I could do little but endure.

So I went east, into Lu's lands.

I had always loved the east. Its misty mountains and constant rains had soothed the fire in my soul for millennia. As a human, it was no different. However, they soothed a bit too much perhaps. With my emigration to the east came a numbness, a dull lethargy, that lasted a hundred years or more.

I remember that time most of all. My life seemed an inescapable dark depression, each day waking to know it would be the same as the day before it. Those years haunt more than all the early years combined. When I was first made human, at least I had the pain of betrayal and thirst for revenge to give meaning to my existence. Once those were gone, I started to wonder why I bothered living on at all. I contemplated, and attempted, a sickening array of methods to end my immortal existence, all of which failed. Even now looking back I cannot think of those days without a shadow falling over my soul.

And then after one attempt I woke to a soft rain falling, knocking petals from the trees. The birds were singing deep in the wood, the rain tapping out the rhythm on the wooden roof of the simple shack I called home at that point. The cool smells, of water, of spring and fresh vegetation, of fallen blossoms, cleansed me. I decided to take advantage of the life I had been given, weak human though I was. I would not give Yan and the others the satisfaction of pining myself away into insanity. I would live well, if only to spite them and their godly arrogance.

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