Shards of Awakening

Fate balances on the edge of a knife and Quan Jia takes a moment to just stare down each of three the paths: a glowing city, a crumbling ruin, an engulfing fog. All three look like fun to explore. All three promise both challenge and reward, though maybe not in the same measure. Still, since she could only choose one, her eyes first trace toward the ones she knows in her heart that she won't choose.

First comes the well paved path, and as her eyes fix on the Imperial Raiment set atop that peerless city, gold, molten and pure fills her sight. As it fades, Quan Jia stares down at a spectral image. A flickering ghost-like vision of herself is standing at the prow of a massive floating ship, a wonderfully absurd plumed hat anchored on her head. Wandering her vessel as it sails through cloud and weaves around mountain peaks is a host of friends, many of whom she had yet to meet, attended to by a near army faceless jade automata. A pang of regret, soon vanishing, flashes through her as she banishes the vision with a shake of her head. Wealth and the near infinite potential it offers is cool, but it feels almost too mundane, too small, for the moment she was balanced within.

As her eyes drift away from that glimmering splendorous city, having rejected the offer of unimaginable wealth, shadow falls upon the path leading to it. Vibrant color turns to monochrome emptiness as the city and the path alike slowly fade away on flickering motes of gray.

Inexorably, her gaze moves on, fixing this time on a singular column of jade-white stone standing solemn remembrance over a cracked and faded ruin. Once again her eyes are filled by color, this time by a mixture of moon-shadow and faded refulgence. As those colors fade, another vision plays out before her. This time, clad only in her skin, she dances beneath the soft luminescence of the full moon in time to the pulsing drumbeat of her soul . Surrounding her from the shadows, spirits and beasts and figures yet stranger still watch in awed reverence as blessings older than civilization paint themselves onto her skin in luminous ink.

Again regret wells within her and again the vision disappears. Ancient knowledge would indeed have been worthy of this moment, but she could only choose one, and she knew she wouldn't choose this.

As her eyes turn toward the third path, the second path vanishes the same as the first: in flickering monochromatic gray.


No vision arises as her slippered feet take that first decisive step into the impossibly dense fog. Instead, sensation begins to vanish. Her senses mute one by one. The constant pull of gravity fades from her frame. The awareness of her limbs vanishes, gone as though turned to wisps of fog. Only thought remains.

Devoid of body, she floats, or at least thinks she does, through an unremitting grey where time flows without meaning. Eternities pass. Ages dissolve into dust and decay. Birth and Death and Renewal pass by without touching her.

A shard of rainbow light flickers like a newly born star.

A man-shaped figure, its skin made ridged with the scales of a lizard. Ritual pours from the figure in cloying waves as it waves a shepherd's crook over seven eggs. Each egg in turn begins to emit a soft pale light. Three eggs flare with color, the first with white, the second with red, the third with black. The three flares of color fade, leaving behind embers of light, sullen and portentous. Four eggs remain dormant, waiting.

Flicker.

A sphere of green and blue set amidst a sunless sea. Floating above it, unimaginably small, unimaginably far away, a ship crafted from jade and gold and orichalcum waits.

Flicker.

A man, radiant with Dao, stands atop a mountain and surveys a land of ash and burning embers. A face worn by tragedy and tribulation smiles. He gestures. A broken leviathan shape melts into earth. He gestures. Ash retreats before new growth, embers fade to edifice. He nods and ascends to his place in the night sky.

Flicker.

Silt and river clay, shaped by a giant's hand form into cities of red stone and brass.

Flicker.

Rivers of blood flow from stepped pyramids hidden from the sun by a jungle's thick canopy.

Flicker. Flicker.

Man runs with Beast. Becomes Beast. Becomes Man.

Flicker. Flicker. Flicker.

Black ooze seeps from cracks in reality.

Flicker. Flicker. Flicker.

Space wrenches. Fog swirls around her. Reality reasserts itself.

Slippered feet land lightly on soft golden sand. Seven crimson eyes stare in mild bemusement as Lady Shifting Sands leans against a plush, tasseled cushion, and sips a viscous silver liquid from a crystalline saucer. "The young Seeker returns, and without even an invitation to show her the way."

"Oh, I'm sorry for the intrusion then…"Quan Jia responds almost automatically and then frowns. There'd been something in the fog, something important… but even as the thought rises, it fades beneath the twinned suns. "I was just… I mean… I didn't think I would… how did I get here?"

"Three paths laid out before you, and you chose the one least traveled," Lady Shifting Sands' words have an odd, almost poetic cadence.

"Oh, that's right," despite the subtle… incorrectness… of the words, they strike a note of memory. Quan Jia nods, "I chose mysteries hidden in fog."

"And your path led you here, how mysterious," A crone's face set above a child's body smiles and Lady Shifting Sands gestures and a second place is set.

"Thanks," Quan Jia steps forward and flops down onto a soft, bright red cushion. So soft... "I wish my Comfy Pillow was this soft."

"It is a trivial thing, at least amidst the Endless Dunes, to Shape Dream." A crimson eye splits Lady Shifting Sands forehead, slowly engulfing her face as it grows. "Simply form an image in your mind of what you want reality to become and it will obey."

Quan Jia looks down at her dress, chosen for a semi-formal dinner. Soft, pale yellow wool embroidered with silver thread looks back up at her. She looks over at her host's dress, the simple cut belying the way the fabric seemed woven out of the fluffiest of clouds. That looks a lot softer and nicer than mine… Her dress shimmers. Wool flickers to cloud and back to wool as Quan Jia focuses.

Faster and faster the dress flickers, before with an almost audible sound it snaps into place. Fabric softer and smoother than anything she'd ever felt before brushes against her skin and she grins, "wow, this is really cool."

"And with your first successful shaping all future efforts should be trivial." A teenage girl smiles a radiant, warming smile. "It seems as though you have grown much more aligned with your Art since last we met, young Seeker."

"Yeah," nods happily, "I found this fragment of [Dream] during one of my classes and cultivation seems so much easier now."

"From the North Wind and the Bones of the Earth did an irascible goat shape seven mountains," thin, ancient lips draw back in mockery. "But I suppose seeing my young Seeker draw use from such ostentation is an appropriate end for that one's legacy."

"Someone made those mountains? Who were they?" pops' is really strong, but even he couldn't have made something like that.

"Merely a man, gifted an Insight and given to wandering," a dry, cracked voice dismisses both question and man.

With an internal sort of shrug… if she doesn't want to talk about him then... Quan Jia changes the subject to something potentially awesome, "So… does the shaping thing work when I'm awake? Imagine how cool it'd be if anything could become everything…"

"There are limits to this Craft, even for the greatest of us. Though I don't think the Shaping of Dream is for you, young Seeker," the teenager sets aside her saucer and stretches languorously, "but you mortals routinely mutilate your soul beyond all recognition, so who can say."

A glass of cold barley tea, formed by an errant thought appears in her hand and Quan Jia takes a sip as she ponders those words, "I've never heard anyone call it mutilation… or cultivators mortals for that matter."

"Without restraint you pick and choose themes to imbue into yourselves… passing fancy and availability," the sneer as she spits out that word does nothing to mar the perfect beauty of her face, "taking precedence over knowledge of your Path and your Fate."

"How would we even know?" Quan Jia frowns, feeling somewhat defensive, "I mean Fate for simple things is easy enough, at least for me, but something that big... I don't think anyone could be strong enough to see that Fate clearly."

"Such is the joke the Heavens have played upon your kind," sparks of crimson mockery burn in Lady Shifting Sands' eyes. "Such is the ████." Her lips move in a discordant way, but no sound emerges, "Hmm… it seems that some mysteries are yet beyond you, young Seeker."

"That sucks," for a moment the unfairness wheat she'd just heard burns, searing hot… but it's not like knowing really changes anything though… so with nothing to do but accept the truth of what she'd heard, Quan Jia swallows her disappointment, and once again changes the subject. "Ninth told me that you were the one to make that weird garden library…"

A queen, timeless and ageless sits upon a throne of Dreams, strange and impossible, "when the first of my subjects pledged fealty to me, I honored their faith by raising such places as would allow them to flourish."

Dignity becomes impish amusement as queen becomes princess, "after all, what kind of court would it be if it lacked all the fun things that go with it?"

"So you built other places?" That revelation is enough to draw away the last of her earlier disappointment.

"Indeed, young Seeker," once again, a teenage girl lounges on stuffed cushions. "In fact, the next time you bestir yourself to venture out into the sect, you may well find yourself at one of them."

[] "Perhaps at a competition of arms between Lords and Ladies, Craftsmen and Commoners, all vying for the favor of a… protégé of mine."

[] "Perhaps at a fair, a celebration to Spring, replete with song and dance and revelry, all in the honor of a… protégé of mine."

The way her smile shifts mysteriously at the word protégé makes it clear that something about the situation is more complicated than it seems.

"Alas it seems as though our time is nearing its end, young seeker," the teenager sighs and shrugs elaborately, sending iridescent ripples through her gossamer dress. "Most strident indeed are your own subjects as they search for you."

"They're my friends," Quan Jia corrects automatically. "And yeah, I may have left in kind of an alarming sort of way. I don't think I could find my way back through that fog though, so umm... would you mind?"

"It would be my pleasure," glowing with an almost painful to look at radiance, Lady Shifting Sands gestures. "Until we meet again, young Seeker."

A kaleidoscope shatters around her, and Quan Jia flops a bit painfully onto marble. Looking up, she grins weakly at eight faces frozen in various states of panic and upset and fear. Incongruously, her first thought is a lamentation for the loss of that cloud-soft fabric. Her second arrives with words and a weak apology, "umm… hey… so I'm back now… I'm sorry I missed dinner?"

[AN I mentioned it in thread, but I think some of these votes may be more interesting if the results aren't explicitly laid out. We'll see how that goes, because there is a line to walk between providing enough information and too much information.]