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

Ling Qi looked down at her reflection in the cloudy liquid that filled her cup, studying the ripples made by her breath. A story of herself, to give insight into who she was? A few ideas came to mind. At the same time, some part of her shied away from the idea of sharing something so personal with a stranger.

"It's hard, but someone has to be the first to share, you know?" Sixiang mused. "I think I like this though, haven't you thought before that dancing around things isn't great?"

She had thought that. Ling Qi supposed, like most people she wasn't great at applying her complaints to herself. "I hope you won't mind a little stylization in the recounting," Ling Qi said, more to delay than anything else.

"I would hope you are enough of an orator to avoid a dry recounting of events," Jaromila replied. "Or is storytelling such an obscure tradition among your people?"

Ling Qi let out a self deprecating laugh. "No, I suppose not."

She took a small sip from her drink and leaned back in her chair. Her eyes drifted first to Hanyi, who watched her curiously from the slightly too large chair, and then up to the ceiling. The iron was painted and textured like leaves.

"Once, there was a girl and her mother. They lived in a sad and dying city, where purpose had long been lost. The girl and mother loved one another, but her mother had a hard and ugly job, respected by no one, least of all herself," storytelling was not really a skill she practiced, but it was not so different from singing, really. There was a cadence too it, and the same effort of condensing complex meaning into more concise lines.

She drummed her fingers on the table as memories came back. Mortal memories were such funny things, soft and fuzzy and unclear compared to memories after cultivation. But she still remembered the contours of their little apartment, and the downcast expression her mother wore even then. Sixiang echoed her words in her mind and together, their voices resonated, and the air shimmered with trace imagery. "Her mother did her best for the girl, trying to teach the girl the things she would need to be something better, but the girl was impatient and disobedient as children often are."

"How much had it cost them in ink and paper for her mother to teach her literacy and sums, when so few in the Outer Tonghou had the time for such things?

"And her Mother was young too, so young, and her clients were often cruel. One day, their trust was broken, and things were said that were not meant, and the girl fled her mother, she told herself it was because her mother was a petty tyrant. In truth she had seen that her mother could not protect her. Foolishly, thought the girl, freedom from responsibility and ties would bring her fulfillment."

The memories that crept up were ugly things, and Ling Qi did not let them linger in her mind or taint the resonance around her much. They were things not forgotten, nor forgiven, but they were less important now.

"It was cold, that winter and the girl nearly died, were it not for a kind old man's blankets," Ling Qi said quietly. "But the 'freedom' she had gained left no room for kindness and so she was alone. The world of freedom was cruel and lonely, and so the girl became cruel and lonely too, but the stubborn girl had convinced herself that it was better all the same and she missed her mother not."

Across from her, Jaromila sat silently, nursing her drink. Ling Qi couldn't read her expression at all. But she had already started the story, she could hardly stop now.

"Eventually, there came men who knew that the girl could hear spirits and touch the energy of the world. She was taken to a place to learn these things properly, but in the beginning the girl was not really any different than she had been in the cold streets."

Snappish, paranoid, suspicious, that was how she had been at the start, even as she told herself to be better.

"But, there came a test, and there she met a smiling spirit. A face of the moon who saw something in her, and thought it good," Ling Qi said musingly. It was strange, at the time it had been buried by other concerns, but that really was the first time in many years that something like an adult had expressed confidence in her. "And there she earned her first gifts, a song, a step and a way of breathing. Enough to let her make a path. She succeeded at the test, and when her peers doubted her, she found that she had a friend too."

That moment, when fan Yu had been berating her, surrounded by disinterested or amused disciples and Meizhen had chastised and scattered them was probably the moment when she had first begun to trust her best friend. But this was not that story.

"But, though the girl began to prosper and even change, she was still missing something. Though she knew it not, the face of the moon knew and nudged things in her favor. On the high mountain paths, she met her teacher in music, and her precocious daughter."

Ling Qi looked over to hanyi remembering their meeting and the game of tag in the snow. Hanyi smiled sheepishly, and Ling Qi paused to let out a small laugh as well. Her smile faded back into an expression of contemplation as she turned her thoughts back to Zeqing. "In many ways, her teacher was what the girl wished her mother had been. Strong and beautiful, seemingly unassailable and unflappable."

Hanyi's own good cheer faded away, leaving her looking down at her hands with her hair hanging over her eyes.

"Though her teacher rebuked her for it when the sentiment came out, it did not truly go away," Ling Qi said softly, recalling that day on the mountain, bloodied and harried by Sun Liling, saved from humiliation and ruin only by the chance whim of Fu Xiang. All the strength she had cultivated shown to be nothing against the Sun Princess. "And in time, when guilt drove the girl to use her new power to free her Mother from that sad city, despite her best intentions, she did not really respect the bent, subservient woman she met there."

It was harsh, but it was the truth, in those first months, she had treated her mother like an ornament, precious, yes, but fragile and best kept insulated from the world.

"But the truth was, her teacher was not perfect and invincible either. Though it was her own self that was the threat. The Songstress of Endings was never meant to be a teacher or a mother. Zeqing chose to be all the same. Endings are inevitable, but everything before them can change."

Ling Qi blew out a harsh breath, remembering the last moments in Zeqing's domain, where a spirit of Inevitably chose to change her course. "And that was the final lesson from her teacher. The next morning the girl really spoke to her mother without holding back, because she knew that there was no time to waste."

Beside her, Hanyi looked up, a thoughtful expression on her young face. In her dantian, she felt Zhengui stir.

Jaromila's eyes had drifted shut somewhere during her story, but the woman's grip on her empty cup, showed it wasn't drowsiness. As the silence stretched on, she opened her eyes. "I suppose the story goes on from there?"

"It hasn't been written yet," Ling Qi agreed. Things were better now, but she was still struggling to organize her life and the many things she wanted to and had to do.

"It's your turn," Hanyi said looking up at the foreign woman.

"It is," Jaromila mused. "For that tale… there is only one I can share and call it equal."

"Please, go ahead," Ling Qi said, settling in her seat and taking up her cup. It was of course, still cold.

"Once, there was a woman of the oldest of the Polar confederations. She was of an old and storied family, whose lands and wealth were among the greatest in the land," Jaromila began, the tap of her fingernails against the tabletop matching the cadence of her words.

"From her youth, great things were expected of her and all the teachings of the nation were at her fingertips, A great Emissary, she would be, advancing the family's interests throughout the confederation, her family insisted," Jaromila smiled faintly as she spoke as if in remembrance.

Ling Qi listened attentively. It seemed that the regal air the other woman had on the battlefield was not just affectation.

"But as often happens with those who make plans within plans, the great family failed to account for the whims of fate, and human feelings. There was a man in the Glittering City you see, a handsome, hard working and joyful man, whose hearty songs brought warmth to the girl's heart. In time, the girl became a woman, and passing fancy became a deep bond."

Ling Qi frowned, but the conviction in Jaromila's voice didn't leave any room for niggling doubts. Nonetheless it seemed her first impression might be wrong, if this wasn't a story of Jaromila herself…

"The woman's kin were enraged when she made her choice. The man was unacceptable, he was a man of the new tribes, with hair of straw and pallid skin, shiftless and untrustworthy by definition," Jaromila spoke the last words with only a slight bitter twist. "Yet it is law that none may force another to choose their marriage. They could not stop her, but wealth is a law unto itself, and so they could punish her."

Some things were true, no matter how foreign a land was, or how strange its laws and ways, Ling Qi mused. She was beginning to suspect the shape of this story. In the faint sparkling frost that glittered on the iron leaves of the ceiling, Ling Qi saw the faint images of a woman stout and sturdy, ruddy of skin and hair, hand in hand with a tall thin man with pale skin and hair like straw.

"They went north, always north, chased by ill rumor and sabotage. Those who gave them shelter found the eyes of the summer traders cold, and aid in the winter slow to come. Even the kindest headmen eventually asked them to leave, for the town's sake if nothing else. Yet, in their travels, they were happy, for they had one another, even in the darkest trials."

Ling Qi saw the shadows of blizzards and beasts in the frost, but always the man and the woman remained hand in hand. It stirred a complicated feeling in her chest that she couldn't quite identify. Doubt was a part of it and yet, so was yearning, for such a refutation of loneliness was something close to her heart.

Eventually, they found their succor in the wild lands of the White Sky, far from the Glittering City and the wealth of the south. Here it seemed the limits of her families influence finally ran dry. Among the hardy people of the north, they found home and companionship. There were few enough who spoke to the spirits that both found their labors needed and soon they built a life among their neighbors. Their years were not without sorrow, their firstborn bore the touch of the crone, but in time, their came a second, and both the man and the woman were overjoyed when a girl was born hale and healthy, with the look of her father about her."

Ling Qi's eyes flicked up to Jaromila's golden hair, so different from the other foreigners she had seen here.
Here, at last, Jaromila paused, closing her eyes. "But, in a winter scant years later, sorrow came. As he had done often, the man, now a respected priest of the sun took up the duty to guide a caravan through the fall snows and deepening twilight, forming the veins of support between the settlements of the north. He did not return. Tales came of a ragged survivor, speaking of a sun priest who had given in the whispers of the void and ended them all, before being slain himself."

"The demons of Outer Night are weak in the north, so far from the gates," Jaromila explained tightly. "And the woman knew the man to not be of weak and avaricious temperament. He would not fall so she thought. Other's humored her, thinking it grief, until the day she went unto the survivors traveling south to hear their story. The woman had grown strong by then, and mighty in the Emissaries arts."

"There had been no Void demon," Jaromila said tightly. "And though the oaths upon the soldiers were strong, and left her with no proof. She knew well where to turn her eyes."

That was… Ling Qi couldn't call it unthinkable, to kill so many of your own people for such a petty reason. She knew well enough the vicious games that could be played among the nobility of the Empire. She had even seen the scars of it in many of her friends.

"It broke the woman, and her daughter saw every step of her decline. She learned the cruelty wrought of unthinking hate and refusal of understanding," Jaromila continued. "Through her mother's eyes, and her lessons in the south she learned the wages wrought by stagnation."

"And, when her Mother chose to become part of the Land to end her pain, that girl gave herself over to the temple, where she learned the role of Emissary connect and to speak, to foster understanding and strike down hate. She learned too how so many failed to live to the words of the gods."

"She would not be like them."

Ling Qi was silent, placing down her emptied cup as the other woman's words faded, feeling the emotions implicit in the words in her mind. Finally as the silence began to stretch, she said, "Ice is cold and privation, it is truth that waits out in the world for those who are alone. Family is what keeps us warm and protects us from the chill."

Jaromila smiled. "Ice is the solid which is liquid. New layers, change, engenders motion, placing pressure on the old, and even the most stolid glacier must flow in time. This is winter, which ends the old and makes way for the new."

"Ice is beauty, it gave people time to tell stories and make pretty things, and makes them appreciate all the work they did when it was warm," Hanyi muttered.

"Ice is many things, it seems," Ling Qi said quietly.
"It is, isn't it. I find your interpretations pleasing as well," Jaromila chuckled. "I cannot speak for your nation, Emissary Lingchee, but you at least I think I trust."

"It's Ling Qi" she said, emphasising the pause and tone. "And I think I can say the same. Let's hope our superiors can be kept in agreement."

"I believe I will toast to that," Jaromila chuckled. "Shall we have another drink?"

Jaromila Bond increases to 1





They had spent a while longer, just drinking kvass, keeping their talk to minor things for they knew they would be back to negotiating in the morning. Eventually though, Ling Qi was escorted back to the guest rooms, and like everyone else, she set to work clearing her head from the days activity. Naturally, she decided to cultivate. With Sixiang's help, she kept her practice of the chords of the Beast King's Savage Dirge from escaping the confines of her room.

Yet, as she played the song, she found her readings of the art mingling with the considerations brought to mind earlier. In her mind's eye, she saw the impetuous Eagle King die alone for his foolish charge, bound in grapnels and nets, brought to earth by the defenders of Xiangmen. She saw the cunning but imperious King of wolves, spending his packs lives like water, assured of his own superiority.

Isolation, physical, spiritual, and mental was the root of failure. Raw might could only take you so far, and when you reached that edge, what came after but the plunge?

Ling Qi opened her eyes, looking over her room. Zhengui slept in the hearth, flickering red and green flames burning around his shell, and Hanyi sat in a chair by the single window, looking up at the night sky. Ling Qi placed a hand over her chest, feeling the ache there. Yet, without strength nothing you accomplished could matter, it would be easily swept away by those who did have power.

"No matter what, we won't be around forever, there's no power that will change that," Sixiang murmured.

...That was true too.

So what was she to do?

She still didn't know how to reconcile things yet.

"Are you okay Big Sis?" Hanyi asked her, tilting her head.

Ling Qi put on a smile and lowered her hand. "I'm fine, just thinking. What about you Hanyi, it hasn't been the easiest day."

"Yeah," Hanyi agreed, resting her chin on her hand. "But you know… it helped, I think."

"Did it?" Ling Qi said.

"A lot of Momma's relatives kinda suck, you know? I don't think I wanna try and be like them either," Hanyi mused. "I think I just gotta keep singing. I think that's the thing that's most important."

That was such a… Hanyi thing to say. Ling Qi couldn't help but laugh, and Hanyi pouted at her for it.

"Hey don't laugh," Hanyi huffed, hooping down from her seat to put her hands on her hips. Ling Qi tilted her head, had Hanyi grown a centimeter or so?

"I'm sorry," Ling Qi said, covering her mouth with her sleeve. "I think it's good that you've resolved to something."

"Yeah I am," Hanyi said, before looking at her in silence for a moment. Before Ling Qi could ask her what had brought on her silence though, she spoke. "Hey Big Sis, you know, even if I can't always follow you into fights and stuff. I'll still be helping right? That's what a Junior's supposed to do when the senior's busy with big stuff, right?"

Ling Qi's smile fell as hanyi broached her thoughts. If she left Hanyi behind though, was that really alright?

"I'll keep that in mind," she said quietly.

She should get back to cultivating, she needed to be well rested for negotiations.

She wondered how things were going, back home.

Vote for an interlude

[] The Declining Storm (Yuan He)
[] The Crucible (Xia Ren)
[] The Faceless (???)
[] The Mortal (Ling Qingge)