Wang Fei's Disciple

"Rebirth" Chapter 2

Nia gasped and opened her eyes to find herself falling through the air, she looked at down to find herself dressed in a traditional dress from the ancient times. In wonder she looked at her hands that where white and smooth with round pink nails.  She glanced below and all she could see was mist covering the bottom of what appeared to be a massive gorge. Suddenly a splitting headache came on and Nia saw flashes of what seemed like memories, but they where not her own. 

"Ahhh" Nia grabbed her head in agony and closed her eyes in an attempt to stop the pain. 

A few minutes later the strange memories became a part of her and she realized that she had transmigrated into the body of a girl who had the same name. From the memories it seemed like she had gone into a different world. The former body had lived in a small village on the edge of a huge gorge. They feared the gorge for legend said that every twenty years a frightful mist would creep up the side of the gorge and everything that the mist touched turned to stone. Plants animals and sometimes even a person would be touched by the mist and turn to stone. They called it the Stone Mist. The story went that the elders of the village had after years of living in almost starvation from the crops turning to stone and the fear that in the night while they were asleep that the mist would come and kill them. That they decided to sacrifice a young woman to the gorge in an effort to appease it. They then had a woman who was an outcast and had strange red hair thrown over the into the gorge. It had worked so ever since then every twenty years there was a baby girl born with red hair that they took to raise to be the sacrifice. She would never want for food and clothes and she never would do any hard work but she would never be loved for her destiny was to be thrown off into the gorge. But the body's former owner was not angry at the village for killing her, she only wished she could stop this tradition forever.

Nia frowned it was a horrifying tradition, she softly said to the former soul. "I will help you live well and abolish that horrible practice." She heard a sigh in her head and the words "thank you" then the soul left. And Nia then fainted just before she reached the mist that floated up from the valley. 

When Nia woke up she found herself on a lake shore. It was a strange lake, the rocks that covered the bottom of the lake had a vibrant red shade. But the water was a dim gray and almost colorless. Nia sat up and set on fixing up her red hair and straighten her clothes. Then she waved her hand and cast a drying spell on herself. Only then did she look around at the thick gray mist that covered everything. She then made a high pitched clicks and using the echo she could make out vague shapes of boulders and the high gorge walls. To her left the walls gradually got narrower and the rocks lay in giant tumbled piles. 

To her right the walls widened and there were less precarious rock piles. Nia turned to her right and strode into the mist. As she traveled she wondered how she hadn't died from that massive fall, even if there was a lake below. She then wandered upon a old path that seemed to be formed ages ago. She thought maybe a long time ago people had lived in this gorge, then laughed and thought that it was more likely to be an animal trail than human made. 

Soon the path wove up a hill and above the mist, from here Nia could look back and see the gorge valley stretch off into the distance. She came to a strange plot of ground with what looked like hyper realistic stone carvings of young women. They lay unbroken and would have looked like they where just sleeping except for the fact that they where stone. As Nia came closer she discovered that these must be the women who that had been thrown down into the gorge before her. They where placed neatly in a square marked off area that looked akin to a graveyard. Nia wondered how they had become stone, then she remembered the legend that the village above had about the Stone Mist. 

Shaking her head Nia traveled on a little more cautious. The path continued for a while then sloped steeply uphill and curved around a large cliff. She slowly came around the corner and saw a strange hut built of stone. She couldn't tell when it had been built but she didn't want to take any chances that who ever built it was still around so she backtracked down the path a ways and then went off to the right there behind a large fallen stone she used spells to built a small hut similar to the one on the top of the cliff. Then she sat out in front and watched the sun slip behind the walls of the gorge then she went into the hut and went to sleep. When day broke Nia awoke and took down the hut. When she was done it looked just like she was never there. Then she sensed movement and using a earth spell concealed herself within the ground. Using another earth spell called Eyes of the Earth she saw a vague figure approach. Nia calmed her heart beat to almost nothing as to go undetected by the figure above her.