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

Ling Qi smiled to herself as she alit atop the packed snow in the bottom of the gorge. To mortal eyes, it stretched unbroken in every direction, a solid field of white. If Ling Qi didn't know better she would be convinced that she was alone here. Naturally, she did know better. Focusing on a a tiny spark of warmth beneath the snow, only perceptible because she knew it was there, Ling Qi let herself sink into the packed snow as mist.

A moment later, roaring heat struck her face as she stepped through the flaps of the pavilion, snow spilled in briefly after her, stopping only when the cloth flaps snapped shut again, cutting off the flow.

"Satisfied with your cultivation for the moment, Miss Ling?" Xia Lin said neutrally, her halberd falling back into rest position.

Ling Qi nodded to the girl, smiling. "No, but my allotted time is up. I believe that means it is your turn?"

Xia Lin smiled thinly. "It is so. Sir Gan?"

"Haha, so that time arrives already," Gan Guangli chuckled.

He sat cross legged further inside. The pavilion was quite large on the inside, and it's canvas walls gave no indication of being buried deep under the snow. The floor was a polished wooden platform, laid out with thick rugs and cushions in dull earth colors. Gan Guangli had been seated one of the larger examples, and now sprang to his feet, head nearly brushing the ceiling. In the center of the pavilion there was a stone pit which should have held a bonfire. Instead, her little brother lounged there, shrunk to a more reasonable size. The smoldering heat in the room radiated from his shell.

"Where is Hanyi?" Gui asked of her as she approached, passing Gan Guangli as he moved to take Xia Lin's place. Out of the corner of her eye, Ling Qi watched as the girl gave him a terse nod. It seemed like that matter at least had a lid on it. Xia Lin's dislike was tempered, for the moment.

Receiving the inventory of items they would be splitting had probably helped Xia Lin's mood.

"Hanyi is staying outside for now," Ling Qi explained, resting a hand on his head. "She'll stay close to the pavilion though."

Zhen flicked his tongue quickly a sign of dissatisfaction. "Hmph, Hanyi should stay inside too," he grumbled.

Ling Qi rubbed her hand across his scaly head and passed him by. She didn't totally disagree, but she felt like Hanyi needed this.

The hours she had spent out in the storm, observing it, feeling it, had pushed her understanding of cold. The flows of her Master's art came so smoothly to her, even more instinctive than before. Witnessing the flows of qi in the storm had given her the final inspiration she had needed to fully refine her master's art. She could call on its full power with only a single pair of meridians now. So if Hanyi wanted a bit more time outside, she would let it go. They were close enough that she could be out there in an instant anyway.

On the other side of Zhengui she found Cai Renxiang, sitting in a meditative pose on a rug of white fur. Her ever present radiance traced the pale lines of an indecipherable mandala behind her. At her side was Meng Dan, who sat looking down in deep concentration at a set of three large bronze rings laid out on the floor. The rings were each two handspans wide and wrought of bronze, inlaid with formation etchings of glittering green jade. The third of the talismans that Ling Qi had deemed immediately useful; they were a tool for refining clairvoyance arts, like those of her Diviner's Eye arts.

Practitioner's Divining Rings: a set of three large inscribed rings, made of bronze and inlaid with jade. They offer much of the benefit of a more traditional stationary scrying setup for a practitioner on the move.
+15 to Perception while using scrying techniques. +15 to appropriate attribute when scrying illusions or misdirecting techniques.
Counts as the appropriate tool for all scrying techniques of Potency Green 6 or lower, and increases technique potency by 1(up to Green 6)

"Have you figured out how to use them?" Ling Qi asked, sitting down across from him.

"Oh yes, the activation was simple enough to decipher," Meng Dan replied cheerfully, tracing his fingers along the rim of the closest ring. Light pulsed in the inlaid jade, racing along the curving lines carved in the metal. Ling Qi followed its path, memorizing the pattern of qi. "Useful things, not as good as a dedicated farseeing chamber, but certainly better than most could afford in the field."

Ling Qi nodded silently, channeling the qi of her own clairvoyance technique into the third ring, the air within its circumference shimmered as if it were a pool of water, which she would normally need for such a thing. Darkening, the view within the ring soon zoomed in on Hanyi still perched on the ledge outside. The image was sharp and crisp, without any of the usual blurring.

"Hm, that will be useful, won't it," Ling Qi mused.

"I would hope so," Cai Renxiang said, cracking open one eye. Radiance bled from her iris, causing Ling Qi to shade her eyes. "I wish for the two of you to search our route ahead and determine the best path for the morrow."

Ling Qi nodded thoughtfully. "You can join in on my vision like before I assume, Sir Meng."

"I can indeed," he agreed, at a gesture, a wide roll of tough parchment appeared in his hands, along with a writing set. "I am sure the Sect and her Grace will enjoy a recent topographical and spiritual map of the region as well, if we are to operate here."

"They will," Ling Qi said. Normally her art was not much use unless she was looking for something specific, but just mapping the immediate region would be fine. "There are three separate spirits mingling in this storm, by the way. I was able to pick them out from the background."

"Troublesome," Cai Renxiang said, closing her eyes once again. "Determine if we will need to propitiate all three, or if it is possible to merely treat with one for passage, and if so how the others can be avoided."

"Yes, Lady Cai," Ling Qi agreed. "Are you ready to begin then, Sir Meng?"

"I am," he said, a spark of pale green wind qi from his fingertips causing the image in the rings to ripple. "And if you will allow, I can show you how to use the other rings to magnify the image or increase the width of the display…"

Ling Qi nodded as he began to show her how to work the rings. They had quite a bit of work to do, before the sun rose beyond the churning clouds.


The region they were in was rough, the last bastion of the highest peaks before the mountains began to grow wider and shorter, with gentler slopes worn down by the glaciers that now nestled in the peaks and valleys beyond. Very little physical flora or fauna flourished here, at least in the depths of winter. Together with Meng Dan, she mapped out the contours of the land, and more importantly for them, the ebb and flow of the spiritual realm here.

Through the rings she was able to study the winter storm, and determine where the lines between the three spirits lay, and the general vicinity of where the centers of their power lay, by finding the places where her farsight failed.

One was the scream of the wind and the force of the driving ice shards, it's power lay in the sky above and to the south of them, where the storm clouds were thickest. Its power was wild and frantic, a thing of wind as much as cold, eroding all before it.

The second lay in the glacier which rested in a high cleft at the end of the gorge they had rested in. Its qi was solid and immovable, ten thousand layers of ice laid down over ten thousand years, compacted again and again until it may as well have been stone, carving the stone ahead of it, millimeter by millimeter with every passing winter.

The last reminded her most of Zeqing. It was the purest cold. It lived in the white out, and on the high peaks, dancing with the first spirit as they drowned the world in white together. In winter it descended to blanket the land in life ending cold as it did now. It's power was centered on a low mountain southeast of here overlooking the gorge.

No matter what, unless they wanted to detour a very long way indeed, they would need to pass through, and to do so, they would need to seek the blessing of least one of the spirits, or at least secure their noninterference. In the end, she was the closest to an expert on such spirits available, and so this time, the choice fell to her. Which would they negotiate with?

[] Seek the wailing wind.
[] Seek the stolid glacier.
[] Seek the smothering white.


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