Sichen was three when the grandmasters first clashed in Zhining Village. She remembered it clearly. The magistrate’s villa was torn from the earth like an obstinate weed, which made everyone cheer, then it was thrown into the drinkhouse, which made everyone groan. But the grandmasters didn’t care. On her father’s back, her small body bouncing to the cadence of his footsteps as they fled their family’s inn, Sichen watched the fighters with unafraid curiosity. Even as ceramic shattered and geese honked and people shouted, even as a broken oxcart flew into the air with a braying ox in tow, even as magic tightened like a fist about to strike, the grandmasters had eyes only for each other.
Sichen was fourteen when the grandmasters clashed again. One moment, she was blearily feeding the chickens, catching what she could of the morning light streaking through the yews, and then the earth was shaking and Old Man Ping’s house was gone. He was still there, yawning in bed, before he realized he had no walls. (To this day, the people of Zhining were still finding bits of Old Man Ping’s roof scattered across town, like fragments of broken teeth.) He made a noise Sichen thought only harpies could make, said a word she wasn’t allowed to say, then took off toward the nearest building for shelter, which unfortunately was the inn. As her fathers came out with blankets and mortified expressions, Sichen stared at the rubble, pulverized in a blast of concentrated qi that arced from across town, which could only mean one thing: the grandmasters were back.
Sichen eagerly stepped into the street to get a better look, but then her dad’s hand was on her shoulder and her father was calling her from inside. It wasn’t safe, she was a child, she had chores. “Little Chen,” her dad scolded, guiding her away from the street. “Those grandmasters despise each other. You don’t want to be caught in their fury, do you?”
With a final, forlorn look in the direction of the grandmasters who despised each other, Sichen trudged indoors.
Sichen was twenty-two when the grandmasters clashed again. Old Man Ping’s granddaughter Leyue had come back to Zhining to take care of him and was helping out at Sichen’s inn to earn extra coin. Even outside of work, Sichen found herself spending time with Leyue: wasting coppers at the drinkhouse, laughing about nothing, teaching each other martial forms they’d picked up here and there. Neither were cultivators, but that idle Quain hope was strong in their hearts: “maybe one day.” They were sitting by the docks, the glistening waters of the Dragon Sweat Run as bright and promising as gold. Their hands touched; Sichen’s pulse quickened. She leaned in, but the river surged.
Roaring like a dragon made of shimmering taels, the water smashed onto the bank three hundred bu away. Sichen grabbed Leyue’s wrist and pulled her from the crumbling jetty. Waves undulated, subsuming fishing boats and spitting angry brine at the shouting, fleeing harborside merchants. A cultivator stood on the bank, a single arm outstretched, the pummeling deluge of river water parted in dark slices at her feet. She was a lithe, handsome woman with short black hair and a temperate face that made Sichen think of a temple statue. Sichen recognized her immediately: she was one of the two grandmasters from eight years ago; from nineteen years ago. Her face and body were virtually unchanged. A dim memory rose—her father, pulling her aside, having found the cultivation books Sichen had spent a whole month’s tips on. Cultivators are to commoners as the Dragon Sweat Run is to a single drop of water... and grandmasters are to cultivators what the ocean is to the Run.
A second cultivator flitted above the rushing, swirling water. Colorful robes billowed around her body. She was a fat woman, cloaked in power and magic, her face a pure halo of beauty that left Sichen breathless. Even after she and Leyue ran to safety, Sichen couldn’t shake the image of those two grandmasters glowering at each other, focused and limitless, as though each of them were the only thing the other could see.
Over the course of Sichen’s life, the grandmasters clashed a few more times in Zhining, making all other duels in the village seem trite in comparison. Although their property damage was considerable, the grandmasters’ blows never fell on bystanders. Stories of the decades-long rivalry spread throughout the province, drawing tourists and traders to such an extent that the magistrate’s son (by now the magistrate himself), commissioned the local stoneworker to erect two statues in their honor by the town gates with a simple plinth: “may their mutual hatred feed our village for years to come.” Some villagers even looked forward to the grandmasters’ clashes, taking bets on when they would next hurtle into town like an unexpected typhoon. Sichen always bet, and she always won.
Sichen was eighty-five when the grandmasters clashed for the last time in Zhining Village. She was managing the front desk of the inn when Leyue came out from the office. Her wife kissed her on the cheek and handed her a coin. “Extra from the ledgers,” she said with a smile. Sichen kissed her back and placed the coin on the ancestral shrine, which bore a small painting of her fathers and Old Man Ping. As she turned back to the customer, a cabbage smashed through the front doors before being drawn back by an implosion of air, shattering the windows on its way out.
Ilustration by Ilina Naydenova
The customers shouted and ducked for cover. Sichen exchanged a look with Leyue, her eyes bright and shining and eager. “Wait here,” she said, then grabbed her cane and ran outside.
The grandmasters were in the inn’s square—her square—and they were fighting with the same single-minded fervor they had for the past eighty-five years. One held a cabbage cart over her head with one arm. The other turned, tore a stone lion from the inn’s doorstep, and held it like a bat. As the other villagers shouted and ran, Sichen stayed at the threshold, watching intensely. The cart flew, the lion swiped through the air, wood exploded, and vegetables burst everywhere. One of the grandmasters grinned cockily as she ripped up another statue; the other raised a second cart over her head—
“Oh, that’s ENOUGH!” Sichen found herself yelling. “Just admit you like each other, already!”
The grandmasters startled. For the first time since Sichen had known them, they looked away from each other—and at her. The inexplicable courage that had filled her froze, like a stag caught in a hunter’s sights. The immensity of not one, but two grandmasters fixing her with their undivided attention was almost too much for her old, mortal body to handle; her heart palpitated, her nerves sang—
The handsome woman laughed. The woman in the colorful robes looked at her with a stunned expression, then she began laughing as well. The sound made Sichen think of Dragon Sweat Run at twilight, the water rushing over the rocks, Leyue’s head in her lap. Then the grandmasters stopped laughing; they took each other’s hands with an intimacy that made Sichen’s cheeks burn, and then they walked. They walked out of the square, they walked through the streets, they walked past the gates, and they were never seen in Zhining Village again.
Leyue came out of the inn, clucking at the damage. “Aiya! Couldn't they have left a tael or two as an apology?”
But Sichen just smiled. “Grandmasters are to regular people as the ocean is to a single drop of water,” she said. “They’re more powerful than anyone can imagine, but they forget the simplest things, like saying ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘Thank you.’” She turned to Leyue with a glimmering look that made her wife’s heart rise to the surface of her chest. “Or ‘I love you.’”
And with that, Sichen kissed Leyue, and they went back inside.
About the Author
Connie Chang (they/he/she) is a queer and trans Chinese-American actual play Game Master, TTRPG designer, and screenwriter who loves threading black-hearted apocalyptica with queer love. They're the GM and Creative Director for Transplanar RPG, an all-transgender, people of color-led, dark fantasy, TTRPG channel telling stories set in an original noncolonial, antiorientalist multiverse. He's currently working on GODKILLER, a two-person holypunk narrative game for one player, the Godkiller, and one Game Master, God. Check her out on Twitter, Itch.io, and TikTok!
To bring this and other Tian Xia stories to life in your Pathfinder game, check out the Pathfinder Lost Omens Tian Xia World Guide (releasing in April) and the Pathfinder Lost Omens Tian Xia Character Guide (releasing in August), both available for preorder now—Customers who subscribe to the Lost Omens product line will receive both books and a complimentary PDF of each upon their respective release!
