Lost Drop - Vixen‘s Ascent

Lost Drops: I talked a bit about having stories that I either dropped or put on hiatus before releasing them for whatever reason. After listening to you guys, I decided to upload a couple of them in my free time. Read them if you want or just pretend they don’t exist. Doesn’t really matter.

I’m calling them Lost Drops, but basically these are just stories that never got finished or died in their infancy. Some of them I’d really like to come back and make a full story. Some of them will probably never be picked up again.

These probably wont be edited too much if at all. I’m posting them as they are in my graveyard of a drive. I’ll try and give a short description of where it was headed for each one.

— — —

Vixen’s Ascent

This was planned to be a merger of a Wuxia and a Xianxia. Basically, there’s the ghosts and demons of a Xianxia, but normal people are limited to the power levels of a Wuxia. No ascending to godhood or anything like that. Just martial techniques with some effects. Bigger emphasis on alchemy, individual martial arts, arrays, and armaments to boost power strength rather than cultivating through the ranks. Fights would be more match-up based rather than who has the higher cultivation rank. I hope that makes sense?

Basically, instead of being action and young master slap down focused with OP MC, it’d lean a bit closer to a survival horror. Especially in the earlier chapters. It’d have a more unique system based on recording knowledge and eventually I planned on the MC building an underworld organization. Oh, and a fox MC. I’m thematically addicted to foxes, the moon, and storms. It’s a real issue.

Theres two chapters for this one.

— — —

Chapter: 1

Warmth. Incredible warmth. It surrounded me, pushing into my body and holding me gently. It was so very comforting. I drifted in and out of the darkness, held constantly by the gentle lull of the warmth. Until something changed. Until it was stolen away from me.

The warmth faded away, leaving an unbearable cold. I froze, my body shivering. When I hit the walls caging me in by accident, I realized I was caged in for the first time. I scraped and clawed at the walls, desperate to get free of the cold before I froze to death.

My claws ached and groaned in pain, though I kept digging, disregarding that fact. I would die here if I didn’t keep trying to escape. The movements brought me some level of comforting warmth, but it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough compared to what once was.

And then my claw caught on something. I scraped and tore even faster, widening a small hole. Light poured in from beyond the hole, blinding my eyes that’d never seen the light before. I flinched back, though I never stopped digging.

Something flowed in, relieving a pressure I hadn’t even noticed in my chest. With that first breath, I realized I was drowning locked in here. I forced my snout out of the hole, desperately trying to get free of my cage-

“Yip!” The whole cage tipped to the side, falling off a high place. It hit the ground hard and shattered around me, freeing me from its strangling embrace. Pieces of it scattered, and a fluid splattered out leaving me laying weakly next to an ornate wooden pedestal engraved with flowing dragons. 

I pushed myself up- was this an eggshell? Why was I in an eggshell? What ever was I? I looked down over my body, getting my first look- was this my first look? My head- it was all over the place. Still attached to my neck though. A furry neck matted to my tiny body by whatever liquid I floated in inside the egg.

Four small paws covered in white fur pushed me up onto my feet, and a soaked tail wagged around behind me. A fox? Was that what I was? Fox’s didn’t hatch in an egg. I could see and hear too. Kits were supposed to be blind and deaf… nothing made sense.

A chill went over me, causing me to tremble in the shattered remnants of the egg. It was so very cold here. Winter? It was supposed to get cold in winter, yip? How did I even know that? How did I know anything, for that matter? Not like the egg had a library I could read through in it.

An answer came to me almost as quickly as I asked the question. It was Ancestral knowledge. Although it didn’t answer most of my questions, it passively filled in the gaps of my common knowledge. 

I looked around the room in confusion. Where even was here? The room was some kind of… storage room? Treasury? Maybe? All sorts of items filled the place, each more interesting than the last. A vibrato hummed in place, resonating deep within my frail chest.

From the walls, pipes hissed and steamed with small bursts of warmth. They moved all over the place, linking to several lanterns scattered around. The lanterns glowed, flicking with an internal blue flame like some kind of ghost fire. It provided some level of light to see by.

I, whatever I was, wasn‘t supposed to be here. That much was obvious at even a glance. Foxes should be born out in the wild, not in some treasure room. A pressure pushed down on my small body, reinforcing that fact. It wasn’t crushing yet, but that could change in a moment. 

Incense cloyed in the air, smoke drifting gently from several burners scattered around the room. The scent of dozens of herbs mixed together with the smokey incense, tantalizing my snout with hints of sweet lotus and bitter ginseng. It was overwhelming to my nose that’d never scented anything before.

Jade slips and manuscripts floated gently above pedestals, bound in the air by invisible chains. Each of them whispered almost like ancient elders were bound to them, just waiting to share their knowledge. Instinct kept me from approaching them. If I did, I had a feeling the pressure on my shoulders would spike to a crushing level.

Weapons sat in racks all around the place. Some looked entirely mundane. Not all of them. Close to my pedestal, a sword hummed with a regal tune in the ambient blue light of the room. Next to it, a bow seemed to drink in the very light around it. Across the room, a glaive thrummed with anticipation for the battles to come.

The pedestal that my egg sat on was the dead center of the massive room. The pedestal had been knocked over by my escape attempts, sending my egg tumbling to the floor. It wasn’t just my egg either. One other item was likewise tossed to the floor.

It was a book of some kind. It had something on its front that I couldn’t read. A title, perhaps? It was a black leather bound book, covered in a silver-red chain shaped like a thorn bramble. The book felt vaguely alien, like it shouldn’t exist.

I shifted closer to the book, sniffing at it with my nose. There was a faint scent to it that-

“Yip!” I scrambled backward when one of the vines around the book whipped out. My small, weak body was far too slow to avoid it though. 

The vine wrapped around my paw, drawing blood. As if that was the catalyst, the book itself melted into a silver liquid like mercury. It flowed across the floor before I could even react, melting into my body through the open injury.

In mere moments, the book was gone, absorbed into my body like there was nothing there in the first place. Great… just born and already attacked by something I couldn’t even hope to understand. My Ancestral Knowledge, which had been of little help so far, couldn’t even figure out what happened.

The pressure built on my body, causing me to tremble for reasons other than the cold. I needed to get out of here. As much as I wanted to stick around, my instincts were screaming that continuing to stay in this place would be a very bad idea. 

I walked to the grand doors of the place with unsteady legs, getting used to the sensation of walking. Blood leaked from my paw with every step, making me feel extremely uncomfortable. Still, I pushed on.

The doors, as if sensing my approach, opened of their own will. Runes glowed along the large red doors. Beyond the doors sat a small inner courtyard with a roofed walkway surrounding the entire place. The same flickering blue flame lanterns sat all around the courtyard, each of them with hissing pipes running up to connect.

Snow filled the courtyard like the place had been touched for several weeks. Speaking of snow, the white substance drifted from the absolutely frigid sky above. Dark clouds covered everything up above, though from the darkness it was probably night. 

It was freezing out here. Another shiver wracked my still wet body. Where was my mother? And here I thought back in that treasure hall was bad. I turned back to the treasure room where it was warm- 

Bam!

The doors boomed and slammed behind me. Glowing runes lit up along the large doors once more, sealing the way back. Not that it mattered. I wouldn’t be able to open them as a baby fox to begin with. I barely had enough strength to move as is.

Noise came from the far side of the inner courtyard, likely drawn by the noise. A shadow appeared on the far side of the space. A bolt of fear coursed through me, pushing back the chill. The first creature I’d ever seen, and it wasn’t another fox.

I scurried back along the wall, hiding in the shadows cast by ornate pillars holding up the walkway’s roof. The head of the person- creature? It glowed with an eerie red light that sent a shiver down my spine. As it walked out into the snow covered courtyard, it left the deep shadows that obscured it.

The thing was a human, I think. It was wrong though. Scales covered it like some kind of mutant abomination. Worse still, its head was detached, held out by its hands sharp talons and dangling by long hair. Red eyes looked around in complete defiance of what should’ve been a fatal wound. Scraps of clothing and armor covered the creature, covered in dried blood and torn apart in places. 

Whatever it was, it shouldn’t exist. My flight instinct kicked in the moment I saw the unnatural detached head of the creature. I couldn’t stay here. It walked across the snow in my direction and it was only a matter of time till it saw me.

My eye drew to the wall of the courtyard. Close to me, part of it was broken like something massive had charged through it. The tattered wood creaked and groaned in the sharp wind of the snowstorm. Beyond it lay absolute darkness lost in the scattering snowstorm.

I slowly slunk low to the ground closer to the hole in the wall. It was my only chance to get out of here. The doors leading out of the courtyard were closed, and they most definitely weren’t designed with foxes in mind. 

There was one thing I forgot about my situation, though. My fur was pure white. Although it was matted and nasty looking, it was still pure white. Shadows didn’t help me at all in this situation. If anything, they just made me more noticeable. Especially once I started moving.

“RrrrrrkkkK!” A guttural gurgle emitted from the creature and dark smoke trailed from its stump of a neck out toward me.

“Yip!” I dropped all pretense of stealth and scrambled for the hole in the wall. My paws slammed into the freezing stone of the walkway, catapulting me through the hair with each step.

Behind me, I could hear it crunching unnaturally fast through the snow. The headless nature of the creature didn’t slow it down in the slightest. Lights flashed from behind, but I was too scared to even look back.

Thankfully, the hole in the wall was closer to me than it was to the creature. I arrived just before it could reach me. Beyond the wall was a sharp drop down into darkness. I glanced over my shoulder, catching sight of the rushing monster. Spectral flames had launched out of its body at some point, creating leering skulls that flung themselves at me.

Guaranteed death at the hands of the monster, or high-chance of a death due to the fall. What a horrible and short life I’ve led… There was really only one option here. I hesitated for a mere moment before tossing myself off the snow obscured cliff.

I fell from the cliff, feeling my body lift into free flight for several lingering moments. My fur flapped wildly in the brutal wind of the storm. I looked up, catching sight of the monster that chased me this far. It stopped just at the edge as if bound to the place.

I slammed into the snow far below. It padded my fall to the point I didn’t instantly die. My body flopped and flailed in an attempt to retrain some level of control, but I continued rolling down the mountain without any way of stopping. I slammed into the snow repeatedly, losing consciousness several times as an rumbling avalanche formed around me.

I passed in and out, dragged by the snow down the mountain. Consciousness flipped like a coin. One moment I was awakened by sharp impacts across my body, the next I was out. It was almost like I was teleporting down the mountain with zero control.

I don’t know how long passed until I came to stop. I awoke buried in the snow. It pressed into my body, leaching any warmth I had left. The stuff pressed down on my snout, suffocating and filling my snout when I tried to breath. 

I weakly pawed at the snow covering me, trying to push it off. I was well and truly buried though. I couldn’t even muster the strength to keep digging.The snow slowly turned red from the injuries across my body. The oxygen pressed from my lungs, slowly strangling me. 

Heh- how stupid. How did I even get here? I didn’t deserve this. I was just born, I didn’t deserve anything yet. Where was my fair shake at life? My eyes slowly started to close as the pain of suffocation began to fade. Everything began to fade.

”Ah… something survived the avalanche?” A sickly voice called out, muffled by the snow. A hand dug through the snow, freeing me from the freezing prison. The last thing I saw before I passed out one final time was a seven-fingered hand covered in stitches stretching down to grab me.

— — —

Chapter 2

Drip!

Drip!

Drip~!

A thin, pale blue light flickered at my eyelids. I struggled to open them, feeling my body groan in protest at such a simple action. My chest felt crushed, like the snow was still pressing down and grinding the air out of me. The rest of me ached from the mountain’s fury. 

Scents of incense and sharp, bitter medicine stung at my nose. The hateful pain was a sign I still lived though. I could feel the cold still coiled in my bones, but warmth filled me. A subtle, steady pulse that I couldn’t quite place.

”Easy.” A sickly female voice called out to me in a low but steady pitch. Fingers pressed down into my fur. They felt so comfortably warm. “You’re in a temple, my friend. Safe. I promise.”

In the distance, the drips continued. They kept me grounded, giving me something to focus on other than my beaten and battered body. What was it- a leaky pipe? A leaking roof? Or some kind of fountain.

My throat felt raw when I tried to make a noise. A broken syllable creaked out, filling my mouth with the taste of blood. “Yi-!”

”Calm, Little Snow. You were buried, but the heavens granted one last thread of fate.” The voice interrupted me gently. For having such a thin, wavering voice, she was oddly comforting.

I struggled to open my eyes. The world around me was a blur, but through my faulty eye-sight I made out red sandalwood beams and latticed windows filtering in a dark sky. It was still snow- no, raining. The subtle plinks were definitely rain falling through a drafty roof.

It looked like some kind of temple, maybe. A large bronze statue of a sitting monk sat off to the side, defaced and cracked in places. The same blue-flame lanterns that were up in the manor flickered here, fed by creaking pipes. They were rusty and dusty though, like this place hadn’t seen much care in a long, long time.

There were signs of recent habitation though. Cleaner censors burned with incense and medical herbs and tools lined the walls on shelves that looked out of place. Paper talismans sat plastered along the wall, shimmering with the faint crackles of a warm fire nearby. 

I struggled to look around, catching sight of a massive hunched figure leaning over me. The figure fiddled with something- needles? I looked down at myself, spotting dozens of silver and gold needles sticking out of my body. My gut instantly churned with nausea.

The large hunchback, features hidden below heavy robes, stretched out a familiar seven fingered hand to pat my head. The motion felt indescribably cozy and warm, drawing my attention away from the needles. “Fortune favors you, my friend. If I’d been any later…”

The memories lanced back through my head. The monster. The fall. The unbearable fear. The pain. The mountain roared underneath me and the thunder of snow falling beat at my ears. The pure helplessness at that moment hit me like- well, like a mountain. My heart spiked with a fight-or-flight instinct once more. 

She noticed instantly, gently rubbing her hand through my fur. “Don’t fight it. Just breathe. You’re safe, I promise.”

Her  words… They anchored me. I followed her advice, breathing shakily. I forced myself to calm down as best I could and just breathe. The calming breaths and soft petting of my savior slowly lulled me back to sleep. 

— — —

I’d drifted in and out since then. My body slowly mended itself, repairing what was broken under the guiding hand of my savior. I mainly awoke to the scents of fresh food, and passed out shortly after eating my fill. My memories were confusing pieces that didn’t fit together. It was like shattered pottery, each edge cutting at my mind.

Eventually, I fully awoke and left the in and out state I’d been trapped in for who knows how long. My body felt much lighter, like I was on the up and up. I pushed my drowsy head up, forcing back the tiredness that pulled at me. I felt… not great, but fine enough. Bandages covered me, each releasing a bitter scent of medicine. The needles were gone at least.

A silver thorn pulsed at the edge of my vision. As if sensing my attention, the pulsations grew more and more wild, entwining into a thorn bramble that burned at my eye. It shifted into a box filled with words in a script I couldn’t read, and yet understand perfectly. 

[Insufficient Records…]

[Collect Further Records…]

[Spirit Fox

Record Level: 1]

What- what was that? I blinked a few times, and the weird box vanished. The silver thorn likewise faded. I could still feel it poking at my eye though-

“Awake already?” A sickly voice called from the main entry into the temple. The door swirled with snowflakes in the short moment it was open. “As expected of a Spirit Beast.”

I flinched, head dropping back onto my paws at the sudden appearance of someone else. Just like before, I couldn’t make out any defining feature of my savior outside of her heavy-hunch and thick robes. “Yip!”

”Your energy is recovering… good, good…” She shuffled over with a bowl of some kind of soup steaming in her seven fingered hands- no, hand. One hand had seven fingers, the other only had five. It lacked the stitch-work too.

”Yip?” Where was I? Why’d she save me? Not that I was complying, but… I had so many questions to ask, and yet no way of clearly communicating. 

Thankfully, she seemed to guess at some of my questions. “Ah, my name. Right… best not use real names in this place, Little Snow. You can call me Graft, like the others do.”

Others? So there was more than one person here… and why did this pe- why did Graft keep calling me Little Snow? Was that my name? No- she said not to use names in this place. Must be because of my fur then. Or because she pulled me out of an avalanche.

 “You really have rotten luck to be born in Ghost Dragon Mountain.” Graft set the bowl of soup down and shook her hooded head in a tsking motion. “A female Spirit Fox though… your kin are probably desperate to find you.”

Ghost Dragon Mountain… The name certainly fit this place. I was almost the ghost within minutes of my birth. By tumbling down said mountain no-less. Not to mention that creepy decapitated monster back up at the manor on top of the mountain. 

That begged the question though; was I back up in that manor? Surely not… although the steam pipes and lanterns looked similar, the rest of this place didn’t even touch how ornate everything at the manor was.

Graft stroked one of the bandages on my side, causing a whimper to break out of my throat. The stroke shifted to a soft petting with their seven-fingered hand once more. “Eat up, Little Snow. You need to regain your strength.”

“Yip-yip!” I lapped at the warm broth, drinking it down without much issue. It didn’t really have a taste outside of bitterness, but I was too hungry to refuse it. The broth was likewise just liquid.

While I ate, Graft redid the bandages covering my body. I felt a little hesitant about the constant touches while I drank, but I couldn’t exactly bite the hand that fed me. The white cloth blended in with my fur, at least. I should be able to blend in with the snow. The top of the manor was the last time I ever made that mistake again.

Once I was done with the bowl, I walked around the small cot that I’d been laid out on. Energy filled every part of my body, and I couldn’t help bounce and pounce around the top of the cot pushing and nipping at the blanket that I’d been snuggled so deeply into.

”Heh-“ Graft stood out, stretching their arms. One went noticeably further than the other. “The heavens only favored you, Little Snow. No other kits survived the avalanche. I’m not exactly nimble enough to play with you anymore… but shall we go for a walk?”

“Yip?” Did she think I was born normally- that was a stupid question. Of course she thought I was born normally. Did I even have a family in the first place? There was just me in that treasure hall. Not that I had a lot of time to look around, unfortunately.

”Just around the old temple, my friend.” Graft missed my question and motioned to the door. “It’ll do you good to stretch your legs.”

I jumped down, feeling my body pull weirdly at the motion. I hadn’t really moved around much in my life, huh? Not that I was to blame for the bad fortune that’d hit me from birth. Most of my injuries felt healed, though I was still really sore.

Graft took slow, steady steps in front of me. She didn’t rush. Instead, she moved slow enough I could easily keep up with my much smaller steps. I hesitantly followed after her, leaving my warm resting place once more. Hopefully this time wouldn’t end nearly as bad.

— — —

AN: That’s the end. I hit a writer’s block right here and this one kinds just faded. I actually really want to come back to this one. I liked some of the concepts and ideas I had a lot and I it’d be a fun take on the usual Xianxia stories.