Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)

One way or another they were going into dangerous territory, Ling Qi supposed, it only made sense to follow the obvious trail. She couldn't afford to start jumping at shadows either. She had handled the beast easily enough and Li Suyin had acquitted herself well. Of course, having decided that, Ling Qi could only wait.

Butchering the bug-thing took the better part of two hours, during which she had very little to do. Oh, Li Suyin needed her help once or twice to rpy a section of chitin too thick to cut open, but Ling Qi had very little to do aside from keep watch, which was a little nerve wracking.

Still, eventually the fist sized greasy black lump that seemed to be the beasts core and many kilograms of chitin and tissue had vanished into Li Suyin's and Ling Qi's storage rings, and with the butchered corpse dragged out of the pit, they were finally ready to descend. Ling Qi ended up carrying her friend down, looping her arms under the shorter girls and carrying her down. With so much stone converted into sand, there was nothing to attach a grapple too.

The bottom of the tunnel lay half a hundred meters down, and the walls glistened with the slimy secretions of the beast they had killed, but they were at least solid.

Ling Qi glanced at Suyin as the other girl released her guardians from storage again. She was glad they were moving again, but…

"I think it's kind of cute," Sixiang said lightly.

Suyin's arms were caked up to the elbows in chunky black and green gore, and her facemask and smock weren't much better. Ling Qi glanced at her own hands, speckled with bug goo as they were. Her gown had repelled the gunk almost violently, thankfully, so it was just her hands and forearms stained with gore. "You really have changed a bit haven't you Li Suyin," Ling Qi mused aloud as Suyin sent a pack of skeletal mice skittering down the passage to scout.

Li Suyin looked to her in confusion, her gleaming eyepatch contrasting with her pale blue eye. "What do you…" She glanced down at herself then, and gave a sheepish shrug. "Medicine is a….dirty profession," Li Suyin replied somewhat self consciously. "You have to deal with many things that others flinch to look at or find disgusting. I suppose I have just adjusted to it."

"There's nothing wrong with that," Ling Qi hummed as they began to move forward, walking quietly down the lopsided tunnel. "I am a little surprised that you have gone so far with these constructs though. Surely the sect had resources that needed less reverse engineering." She had treated the pale manuals constructs as more of a hobby. Even the Ossuary Horror, the most complex formation she knew, was more of a distraction tactic for her.

"...Sometimes things shouldn't be beautiful," Li Suyin replied absently. "Isn't it better not to hide the nature of some things?"

Ling Qi frowned. "I suppose not. They don't need to be pretty to work."

"It might be a little childish, but I admit that I like the idea of turning things people consider unpleasant to good ends," Li Suyin replied. "After all, so many things considered virtuous are…" she trailed off shaking her head.

Ling Qi hummed in reply, not really sure what to say.

"She's having a little fun with the idea of inversion of aesthetics is all," Sixiang whispered. "Like the frost flowers Hanyi showed you. Beauty arising from desolation."

'Kind of inferring a lot from a little aren't you,' Ling Qi thought back dryly.

"I'm a muse, that's my job," Sixiang shot back.

"Ling Qi?" Li Suyin asked, glancing over at her as they paused at a curve in the tunnel, waiting for her scouts to return.

"Just chatting with Sixiang," Ling Qi replied. "About the aesthetics of your constructs."

Her friend blinked, looking befuddled behind her mask. "...Oh, what do they think?"

"She should mix elements of traditional attractiveness into the work. The uncanniness of the contrast between the attractive and repulsive elements will enhance the image she's going for," Sixiang rattled off in an instant.

Ling Qi blinked slowly at the long winded response. "...Sixiang thinks you should use some conventionally beautiful elements in the mix. The contrast will improve the overall unsettling vibe."

Li Suyin frowned. "Um… I see. I will take that into account," she replied, not sounding as if she was sure of that at all. The conversation petered out as they turned their focus back to exploration. The tunnel wound for a fair distance before breaking out into empty air. At the end of the tunnel they emerged on the wall of a chasm, too deep for even Ling Qi to see the bottom of. The yawning gap simply stretched down and down, until all Ling Qi could perceive was undifferentiated gray. They did however, emerge on a sloping cliffside, so there remained a trail to to follow, tracking the slime and scrapings of the giant beetle down.

On the way Ling Qi saw many things skittering and flying in the darkness, in more shapes than she could count. Some ignored them, while others stared down at them with inscrutable eyes. Ling Qi remained on guard, but none seemed prepared to attack. She still felt a bit relieved when their trail led back into a tunnel and away from the abyssal chasm. Eventually, they came to a wide, circular chamber some forty meters across, with a floor of soft white sand. The bug thing's qi marked the place as deeply as the gouges and scratches left by its limbs did. Another two tunnels lead deeper into the earth, seemingly natural this time.

As Li Suyin hurried to examine discarded moltings and fragments of shell scattered across the cavern, Ling Qi peered around carefully, her flute remaining in her hands. She felt an itch, a feeling in her gut telling her to stay on edge. So even after nearly a quarter hour had passed, and nothing had happened, she still very nearly leaped out of her skin when the sand off to her right stirred.

The shifting grains mounded up as something beneath burrowed thrashing upward. Ling Qi had a moment to see some pale skinned and grublike beginning to emerge before the single sharp note that she blew from her flute blasted the top half of the creature into a sticky red green mist.

Li Suyin paused in harvesting the empty moltings a few meters away in the echoing silence that followed, and Ling Qi herself felt her nerves subside a bit. It had only been some kind of weak beast, no more than first realm.

Why hadn't she felt its approach then though?

"A scavenger…?" Li Suyin mused, even as her clanking guardians moved into more defensive positions.

Ling Qi focused, and behind her eyes, sixiang did the same. Her eyes rippled silver, both argent and lunar qi mingling to enhance her senses still further. She felt it then, no presences per se, but a disturbing sort of absence, like a shadow glimpsed in a dark forest. The sand boiled beneath their feet, and this time the creature that emerged was not alone. Ling Qi got a better look this time, though she wished she hadn't.

Their flesh was glistening and pale like a maggots, and their movements betrayed a certain repellant softness at odds with their shape. They resemble humans, if humans had been forced to crawl on all fours like bugs until their limbs bent unnaturally out, lending them a skittering rodent like gait. Their heads were worse, eyeless and bald, pale, blue veined flesh stretched thin over empty eye sockets. Bristling whiskers protruded from their otherwise hairless skin just below their elongated nose and chattering teeth. Their visages were like some hideous combination of human and rat.

Now that she knew what to look for, Ling Qi could feel the shadow of even more presences from further down. They were under the sand and down the tunnels, a creeping horde that she could not count. Yet even then, Ling Qi wouldn't have worried. The creatures were weak, within the bounds of the first and second realm. Ling Qi played, and her mist rolled out, engulfing the pale and skittering beasts as they turned their snouts and sniffed the air. Crimson eyes and black claws bloomed in the mist, and they were torn apart, their soft flesh like paper before the claws and fangs of her phantasms.

Yet Ling Qi could feel greater presences amidst the sea of not-qi, like the ripples left by a larger fish. There were at least three third realm entities coming up from below, though none above the first steps into the realm. Even deeper than that, Ling Qi thought that she felt the presence of still more, but at the distance, it was impossible to be sure.

"Ling Qi?" Li Suyin called through the mist, moving to stand next to her as more rat-things emerged into the mist only to die. "There is still a great deal more to harvest here, do you think you can keep these things away?" She asked, peering down at the twitching corpse of one of the rat things.

Ling Qi grimaced, letting her qi carry the tune while she spoke. "....I can't count how many, there's some third realms approaching too."

Li Suyin winced. "I suppose we should begin retreating then. The molts will have to be enough, I was sure that I found the signs of a nest though..."

Ling Qi considered her options, feeling creatures rising in such vast numbers gave her unsettling flashbacks, but this was hardly the same, was it? On the other hand, she still had trouble perceiving these creatures properly, and it made judging their strength difficult.

[] Begin retreating. keep your mist up and layer on the full effects, you should escape easily enough
[] Hold your ground. You are Zeqings student and nearly a master of the Forgotten Vale Melody. Let these creatures lose themselves in your song and despair. Hold the cavern against all intruders preserving whatever is within.
[] Choke Point. Retreat only to the entrance tunnel, and hold your ground there. May result in the caverns contents being damaged, but offers greater defensibility in the coming conflict.