Two Grandmasters on Peach Mountain

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“Every day our ranking members risk their bodies and minds to push back the Green wave. They must rappel down and overturn the vines creeping up the mountainside. But you and your Ringing Hoof are so fortunate as to not need to dirty your hands with hard work. You instead set your disciples to weaving. Weaving pretty pictures and frilly scarves,” Grandmaster Lonnie snorted. “I should lodge a formal complaint with the Council.”

Grandmaster Athena stood firm before him, head tilted forward in defiance. “We weave to preserve our past, as you might know were you not so bull-headed. We weave a thread stretching over a thousand years, to before the Green. But that’s beside that’s not the point. We have always considered a gentler, more harmonious touch than you Digging Oxen, who plough up your spire and only create fresh ground tilled for the vines.”

“We are the Standing Ox,” said Lonnie, bristling at the insult. “I will defend our honor, especially against a Green-worshipper. Gaia’s secret has always been obvious, and your treason must end. Land’s Inexhaustible Armory!” Lonnie stomped his foot, and a boulder the size of an ox rose to meet his forceful palm-thrust and exhaled breath. It catapulted forward at Athena, she dodged, and the boulder fell amid the peach trees.

“Wh-what? Gaia is emphatically not the Green! She does what she can against it and would happily offer her protection, should you only ask.” She too stomped, but as she clicked her iron heels, instead a golden-clear bell tone resounded like a drop of water and swelled rippling around her. “Phonolite Gamelan Crystal Shield!”

“That Gaia is not the Green is a technicality. That all-consuming rot is her work all the same. Eighty-One-Ton Standing Monolith...” To Athena’s eyes, it appeared that the very mountain had risen against her, swelling around his arm into a fist of geologic proportions and forming a concretion of fossils chronicling aeons past.

“Have you no respect? I tell the stories, I teach and offer the wisdom of the past, but nobody ever listens. I bring a cow to water, but I cannot make it drink. Eight-Ringed Gong of Centuries’ Resonance!” She traced with fluid gestures a circular shield before her, then clapped her hands on the invisible boss. A blast of sound erupted …

... and was met with Lonnie’s charge. “... Exploding Fist!”

As they both reeled from the impact, a continued rumbling introduced itself beneath their feet. The very mountain, a vertical pillar of stone a thousand fathoms high, was unraveling. It shivered, fractured, and collapsed.

Down went numberless warriors, scholars, and artisans. In the tapestry of the Green’s survivors, a wound. 47 Spires remained.