The Fable of Joyful Wing is a The Dresden Files and Bridge of Birds crossover fanfic by shiplizard, transporting Dresden-verse characters to the fairy-tale Chinese setting of Bridge of Birds. It can be read here.
Du Hui Rui (more commonly known as Long Dog, due to his height and Perpetual Poverty) is a poor magician/detective in the city of Peking, taking cases for people who can't afford to hire more respected sages. The story proper begins when his ghostly mentor Bone Cage recounts to him the story of the witch Joyful Wing and her husband, who was a skilled magician and sage. After her husband had stolen a peach of immortality from paradise to try and save Joyful Wing's life when she was dying of poison, the two of them were sentenced by the immortal captain of the guard to a Fate Worse than Death until they could find each other again.
Realizing that the husband of this story is none other than Bone Cage, Long Dog vows to find Joyful Wing and reunite them after nearly a thousand years of suffering, no matter the danger or that no one believes it's possible.
Accompanied only by a horse loaned to him by Sigrun, a barbarian-witch employed by Little Tiger the bandit and a guardian dog puppy that Long Dog rescued from a destroyed monastery, he sets out to the land of the dead to find Joyful Wing and bring her home. During his journey he encounters many strange and dangerous beings, many of whom fans of the Dresden Files will recognize.
Tropes in this fanfic include:
- …And That Little Girl Was Me: It is only at the end of his story about Joyful Wing and her husband's tragic fates that Bone Cage admits that the husband is him, and that his skull was eventually passed down from the sage who originally plotted his death to Long Dog's father and from him to Long Dog.
- Animorphism: The Wolf King and the Wolf Queen are spirits who can change between the forms of humans and enormous wolves at will, and their students can take the forms of foxes.
- Back from the Dead: Said to be impossible in this universe when attempted by a mortal, as it would require stealing either the pills of immortality, the elixir of life, or the peaches of immortality, and no mortal has ever succeeded in doing so. However Yama, as the god of the dead, has the ability to bring them back to life, and does so to both Bone Cage and Joyful Wing at the end of the story once he's seen that they were innocent of the crimes he'd been told they'd been enduring fates worse than death for.
- Badass Normal: Little Tiger has a hold over the entire city, despite having no magical skills or lineage himself. He's even bold enough to go out in person try and bargain with the immortal guard captain when he comes to Peking, and manages to escape with his life.
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: Dog has the same urge to help people in trouble that Harry does in canon, and his journey ends up side-tracked multiple times by him stopping to help those in need. This pays off in the end, as all the people Dog helped on his journey reappear to aid him in escaping from the captain of the guard.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Yama, the god of the dead. Despite his terrifying demonic appearance and ruling Hell itself, he's actually very reasonable for an immortal, and helps Long Dog in his quest once it's revealed to him that his records have been altered and Joyous Wing's soul was stolen from the normal cycle of reincarnation.
- Evil-Detecting Dog:
- Alfhind refuses to go anywhere near the monastery Long Dog encounters early in his journey. Though Dog tries to convince himself that it's just that she's a pagan horse and thus is uncomfortable around a Buddhist monastery, it's his first tip-off that something evil is lurking there.
- Mouse is able to sense which voices in the spirit world are real and which are lures from hostile beings meant to lead Dog off course, and prevents him from following the false ones.
- Faking the Dead: The Wolf Queen pretends to die in front of Long Dog in order to motivate him to fulfill her "dying" wish of stopping her cursed husband from harming the children nearby. Dog is understandably annoyed to find her alive, well, and eating his food after he barely survives battle with the Wolf King and staggers back to his campsite.
- Feed It a Bomb: How Dog defeats the snake demon. Realizing that its scales are too thick for his usual tactics to work, he resorts to throwing a makeshift Molotov cocktail into its mouth and running like hell.
- Ghostly Animals: The main character is rescued by the ghosts of the loyal guard dogs of a monastery that the villain's nephew had burned down. They're completely harmless to mortals, but since the villain is a spirit himself..
- Hero of Another Story: Many characters of The Dresden Files are mentioned in passing as having stories of their own that Long Dog will tell at another time. Mentioned specifically are how Little Shield (Murphy) became the first female captain of Peking's city guard, how Pious Sword (Michael) rescued Iron Hammer Maiden (Charity) from a dragon, how Little Tiger (Johnny Marcone) went from a common bandit to nobility, and how the half-demon Thirsty Heart (Thomas) found his brother and eventually fell in love with a human woman.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Joyful Wing knowingly drank poison meant for her husband in order to save him from it, and died slowly and painfully for it.
- I Owe You My Life: Little Tiger owes Long Dog for his discretion about knowledge that both know Long Dog could have used to utterly destroy him. This is why he's willing to order his guard Sigrun to help him get to Hell, though Long Dog insists that he'll pay him back a favor in return for it, as he's disgusted at the thought of using that knowledge to force even someone like Little Tiger to help him, comparing it to holding a knife to Little Tiger's throat.
- Identity Amnesia: The map woman can't remember anything prior to being enslaved by the captain of the guard, but knows that something important to her was taken and that she needs to find it again.
- Immortality Inducer: The peaches in the garden of paradise give eternal life to a moral who eats them. Bone Cage is the only mortal who came close to succeeding in stealing them, though they were recovered before they could actually be eaten.
- Not Too Dead to Save the Day: The ghosts of Mouse's family temporarily return to protect him, Long Dog, and Joyous Wing when they're fleeing for their lives from the captain of the guard and his family. Long Dog thinks of it as them returning to protect their youngest and smallest child from the family of the monster that killed all of them, as the spirit who killed them and destroyed their monastery was the nephew of the captain of the guard.
- Overly Long Name: The Princess Sage of Eternal Memory of Everything Written, who Dog privately thinks has a very large name for such a small girl. She doesn't mind being nicknamed Flower Poem, though.
- Parental Substitute: Bone Cage is one for Long Dog after his father died, to such an extent that he thinks of him as his second father and Bone Cage calls him his son at the end of the story.
- People Puppets: The Wolf King has been turned into one when Dog meets him, with silver jewelry that he'd been given as a gift actually magical puppet strings that control his body. Dog frees him of them by burning them off and cutting them with a knife, though once he gets the collar off his neck the Wolf King is able to help by gnawing them off himself.
- Power Nullifier: Running water negates magic for both human magicians and non-human creatures.
- Scaled Up: The snake demon who posed as a monk abandons his human disguise once Dog realizes what he is and attacks him, returning to his true form: a giant demonic snake with scales so thick that the only way to harm him is to Feed It a Bomb.
- Shout-Out: Though not as numerous as in the source material, there's still a fair few references to pop culture in the form of fables.
- "or how Lightning Scar nearly killed the Dread Warlord and Slow Son had to finish the job for him": Refers to Harry Potter, and specially Neville, Voldemort and Harry.
- "how the silver-eyed demon named Sun Blindness led a little girl and a Buddhist Monk across the deadly desert of night, and was converted to Buddhism": Refers to the movie Pitch Black.
- "I could tell you how the spirit called String of Pearls seduced a husband and wife on their wedding night": Refers to The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
- "how Golden Stallion nearly ended the world over the matter of a cursed ring, and how his brother Number Two Stag put it right again": Refers to The Lord of the Rings, and specifically the characters Boromir and Faramir.
- "how the ugliest and blackest-hearted soldier in the country lost his heart to two cousins— fortunately one of them was the fabled Red Ribbon Monk, who mended his heart and his head and made him a hero of China and the protector of wounded men": Refers to the book series Under Jurisdiction.
- Silent Snarker: Alfhild the horse, whom Dog becomes adapt at the translating the disdainful body language of. She makes it clear she thinks Dog is foolish in the extreme, but nonetheless obeys her master's orders to help him get to Hell and back again.
- Supernatural Gold Eyes: The wolf king and queen both have golden eyes no matter what form they're taking, marking them as spirits instead of ordinary animals or humans.
- To Hell and Back: Dog's main journey is to the Hell, with the excuse given to the guards that he's delivering a message from Odin to Yama. In actuality, the letter was written specifically so that he'd be allowed an audience with Yama, allowing him to hopefully gain his help in locating Joyful Wing once Yama is convinced that her soul is missing.
