All the votes are in! Let's see what #sangyao brainrot I can make of your answers.
The ruling families of the jianghu from ancient times to modern have always been of Ethereal lines.
Thus when the Nie clan, almost entirely made up of Feral wereshifters, begins gaining political prominence, the other clans decide they must be stamped out.
The fighting has lasted for over four generations. While the other clans have stronger magic, the Nie are constantly drawing new numbers from other Feral families and villages that are tired of being treated as lesser.
In the midst of all the chaos, a surprising relationship
develops. A young unicorn traveling under a human glamour becomes besotted with the current Nie lord *and* his wife, and they with her. Refusing to return to her hometown, she accepts their offer of a triad marriage, and a year later, a second son is born to the inner family. +
Nie Huaisang grew up wishing he'd be like his mother.
Not because he hated the rest of his family or anything, but because the entire concept of "food" disgusts him. He has seen them hunt and he has seen them eat and he wants no part of any of that.
When fangs began pushing
out his birth teeth, it wasn't just the pain that made him cry.
His mother, sensing the true cause of his distress, tried to reassure him. He could still eat things *other* than meat, she promised. They would grow a garden behind the walls; she would eat the fruits and
vegetables with him.
It wasn't enough to calm his misery. It felt like he was dragging her down with him.
When he was thirteen, Nie Huaisang slipped out of the fortress walls, seeking a way to get rid of the hunger twisting up his insides. +
Jin Ziyao is *nominally* a prince of the fucked up nest of political intrigue and backstabbing that is the Jin clan, as his mother is one of the many lower-ranking Ethereal women who caught his father's eye and found themselves no longer able to leave Koi Tower.
But he knows exactly how tenuous his position really is. Already, in order to appease his father's equal-rank wife, he has been forced to rewrite his age and dampen his magic in order to not be perceived as a threat to *her* son.
And now this.
He is only about to turn
fifteen, and he has been sent out into the danger zones between the rival city-states to find something that will give the Ethereal clans an advantage against the upstart Nie ferals.
It's practically a suicide mission, and he knows it.
But he has no choice in the matter, not
with his father hanging his mother's wellbeing over his head.
The only protection he has is that once he reaches the bottom of the stairs, his magic will no longer be bound and he can influence those around him freely. It won't save him from *demons*, but at least he'll
be able to keep from being gutted by the first wereshifter he comes across.
+
The first time Jin Ziyao comes across Nie Huaisang he is... extremely confused.
Who wouldn't be, faced with the sight of a boy with fangs and claws huddled in a ball and quietly sobbing as he tries to force himself to eat a lychee skin, seed, and all?
Concerned despite himself,
Jin Ziyao crouches beside the strange boy and asks what's wrong.
"I don't want it!" the boy sobs, even as his stomach snarls loudly in clear hunger.
"Well, of course you don't. You should be eating meat, shouldn't you?"
"No!"
+
"How old are you?" Jin Ziyao asks disbelievingly.
A sniffle. "Thirteen."
A thirteen year old feral who won't eat meat and doesn't know *how* to eat a fruit? This just keeps getting more and more bizarre.
He takes the lychee out of the boy's hands and strips the rest of the
skin off with a little twist of power, then removes the seed with the same ease. "Here."
"I don't want it."
Jin Ziyao frowns, then slices out a piece away from the bitten part and eats it himself.
The boy's stomach growls even louder and he curls himself into a ball with an
absolutely pitiful little whine.
"Why are you so intent on starving yourself?"
"I'm not-" another miserable sniff, another stomach growl. "I'm not supposed to be like this. I'm *not*. I have-" *growl* "I have to fix it."
Jin Ziyao's eyebrows raise. He's heard all the horror
stories of ferals trying to become ethereals by underhanded and vicious means... usually by *eating* one.
But this... he can't put his finger on what's nagging at him about this.
Reaching out with his free hand, he lifts the other boy's chin with gentle fingertips. "Why do you
have to fix being hungry?" he asks, putting some Influence behind the question.
The boy shivers, eyes glossing over from the Influence. "Because my mother's never hungry," he says.
...
Oh.
Oh, that's *very* interesting.
(TBC)
They are both smart enough not to give each other their *full* names, so they are simply Sang and Yao to each other as they start the search for a "cure" for Huaisang and "something a bit more abstract" for Ziyao.
An ethereal and a feral traveling together gets some funny looks,
but the only ones who ever actually ask about it are other ethereals easily placated by the claim that Sang is a servant.
("Stop making that face. It keeps us from getting questioned further, doesn't it?")
Food continues to be a point of contention, to the level that Ziyao
sometimes has to resort to Influence to get Huaisang to accept even a bite here or there.
(And if he finds Huaisang eating from his hand with a glassy-eyed stare just a little bit... *attractive*, that's nobody's business.)
Gradually, the pieces fall into place and Jin Ziyao
realizes just *who* his traveling companion is.
The irony that he's been searching for leverage against the Nie clan with the perfect hostage *right beside him the entire time* almost knocks him on his ass.
It would be so easy to bring *Nie Huaisang* back with him. He's already
been Influencing the younger boy to eat, all he'd have to do is mix a little of his own blood into the next meal and Huaisang would be under his control permanently.
He and his mother would finally be safe.
At yet he finds himself uncomfortable with the idea of letting his
father have the boy.
Huaisang is nothing like the monsters Ziyao had had described to him all his life. Huaisang has been nothing but sweet to him the entire time, even when annoyed with the servant ruse or frustrated by his difficulties with eating.
Thinking about what would
most likely happen to him in Koi Tower...
But... Ziyao has to protect his mother.
He *has* to.
The guilt eats at him, but if he has to choose...
Huaisang never notices that his bowl of stew at their next stop has an extra ingredient.
"Sang-di. Let's go."
+
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