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

Winter comes as the frost maiden's train the clouds are the billow of silk in her stride. The snow falls upon the land, and leaves the glittering beauty of white, the blanket of the falling snows. The Maiden's voice rises, the soft song which tugs at shudders and shakes loose the last crinkling leaves, beauty ephemeral passing as it may only once in each turning, on comes the winter, on comes the snow. See its glitter, look in awe upon the hills laid to rest 'neath the blanket of white. See the mortals, telling their tales round the fires, the nurturing blessing of belief, winding to the skies. Feel the smoke that rises and crackles with the meat of sacrifice. This is the Maiden's offering, that all her attendants might partake of.

Fairies shriek and call out to one another over the call of Hanyi's voice as she builds herself up. The mantle of spiritual power Ling Qi had drawn about herself she allows to fade, spooling into the figure Hanyi is making of herself in the whirling column of snows ahead. Her stage is the hilltop, slick now with ice. She is tall indeed now. Taller than Ling Qi, that shadow in the wind. With a white gown as elegant as her mothers, with whipping white braids hair dissolving into the snow and wind at their tips. In her hand's are fans of transparent ice, etched with patterns in blue and black fluttering before her face, moving with the graceful motion of her hands, accentuating her dance as she sings.

Hanyi is going to be a dangerous one she thinks.

The shrieking laughter is lesser now, and Ling Qi can sense the fairies of the snowstorm, masses of cold and power, flickering and ephemeral first realm some on the verge or peaking into the second. They bob and titter and blow snowflakes about, entranced and hungry. They are small things, small vessels. But they are cold, and cold is never far from the dark. It is hungry, and such a meal is no small offer.

A shard of ice cuts through the air and shatters against one of Hanyi's fans. It is the first of many, pelting the hill where she stands. Each one carries mockery and derision.

City thing, man thing, swamp thing, soggy witch, these hills already sing, a beauty greater than thy own!

Up in the clouds Ling Qi sees the ripple of blue fabric, hands on hips, wings of ice and an inhuman face, featureless but for eyes of solid blue radiance. Descending from the higher peaks in response to Hanyi. There is more to this one, a solid core of frozen power rather than a diffuse ball of snow.

Hanyi's song doesn't cease, even as her eyes narrow to white slits of affront

Ling Qi wouldn't call the line that rings next discordant exactly, but…

O, who approaches? Who stands before the maiden? Feckless flake, be on your knees!

A screech, yes, like nails of glass or the scream of a high wind. There is no way to really describe what happens next in elegant terms….

Little fairies scatter and giggle madly, blown end over by the wind. Ling Qi's hair whips out behind her, still barely down to her ears, a ragged fluttering black banner as she raises a hand to shield her eyes against the backwash.

…Of Hanyi's heel striking the ice fairy dead across the featureless face, a picture perfect flying kick. There is a screech of affront. Ice shatters, jagged icy blue hair crinkles and breaks, pure white locks are yanked, fingernails scrabble plunging through ice and slush and cloth that reforms immediately in its wake.

There is no way for even the authority she had gathered to render this dignified. She's pretty sure even if you use fans as weapons you're not actually supposed to wield them like clubs…?

They hit the earth in a plume of snow and dust, and altogether, the gathered atmosphere is really just kind of shattered.

Ling Qi sighed, rubbing her forehead. She wished Sixiang was here, they'd probably be rolling down the hill laughing.

Still, this was Hanyi's show, and she did tell her junior sister that she would let her handle it. The lesser fairies whorled overhead in the eddies of snow, dancing around the scuffle going on below.

"Whose soggy now you…."

"Cheater, cheater! Using the ground is no fair!"

"Huuuuuuh? Fair? What are you stupid? Don't challenge the Maiden if you don't wanna eat mud!"

"Iiiiits in my eeeeeeeyes!"

Ling Qi found herself pinching the bridge of her nose in a way distressingly similar to the way Cai Renxiang did when Ling Qi herself brought the heiress something outlandish.

Hanyi stood triumphant atop the ice slick hilltop. One bare foot planted between the shoulder blades of the ice fairy grinding her face down into the mud churned up by their scuffle. The fairy was, Ling Qi could discern now was roughly peak second realm. Which was probably what Hanyi had been meaning to draw out, given what she had said.

Still, her junior sister was being a little crude here…

"Hanyi, she can't listen to your words if you embed her entirely in the hillside," Ling Qi said mildly.

Hanyi's whose braids were whipping about her head, and whose cheeks were puffed out and flushed a dark blueish purple, stilled like a statue at the sound of her voice.

"Y-yeah! I know Big Sis, just making sure she's ready to listen," Hanyi replied a little too quickly. She did not, Ling Qi noted, let up the pressure on the heel grinding down on the greater fairies back one bit.

Her junior sister jabbed her now folded fan up at the other fairies circling overhead."You see huh? Nobody has to eat mud if they listen huh? I've got waaaay better things for you to eat. And I'm way prettier than this slushy reject, yeah?!"

The clouds overhead churned and boiled, a knot of cloud forming, wind currents clashing unnaturally, but one current was obviously stronger than the other, more coherent and focused.

"Look all around, see how pretty the hillsides are, even on your own, you did this," Hanyi said, one fan snapped out trailing glittering flakes. "But it could be better! If you follow me, we can play on the regular every winter AND get treats for doing what we do anyway."

"Mmnot a pettttttt," whined the greater fairy under her heel.

Hanyi sniffed. " Nah, you're a hooligan! But thats okay, I can show you how to be a good lady of the snow. Look at you, you came in here like a big windbag, couldn't even tell I was stronger huh? And what'd you do if you had hit big sis with an icicle huh? She's way stronger than me!"

Ling Qi tilted her head, meeting the watering melting chunk of ice crystal that served as the fairies eye as she struggled to drag her face out of the mud. Pale, featureless ice somehow grew clearer, looking at her.

"Mmnot the biggest 'round here, you're both still gonna be in trouble," the faerie sulked.

"Hmph," Hanyi grumbled, lifting her foot. "We'll see about that! Why don't you tell us where they're at, huh?"

Ling Qi nodded approvingly. There was only so much to be done interceding with the least spirits in a completely wild area. While they would need time and a shrine to properly interact with the greater spirits of the regions weather, dealing with the smaller and most local nodes was their best bet for dealing with this efficiently.

Though she might have skipped the mud stomping.

But maybe that was the wrong way to be thinking of things. Violence was… fundamental to winter, and her ice arts. Maybe she had been focused so much on diplomatic pursuits, she had been failing to sharpen her blade properly.

Winter was a thing that killed, it was the season of endings, even if those endings were for the purpose of priming new creation. What came after didn't change the fundamental truth of the now.

"T-the higher slopes! The big fairies hang out closer to the snowcap, you'll be sorry if you go though," The fairy sprang up from the ground, icicle limbs thrashing as the wind carried her aloft again, her simple 'gown' of crackling blue ice still smeared with clinging mud that seemed to refuse to phase through her. Hanyi's doing, she supposed? One pointed limb jabbed toward the northern sky, and Ling Qi implicitly understood which peak the fairy was thinking of, despite the vagueness of the gesture "The ice sheets and the whiteout cliffs!"

Ling Qi smiled faintly. "Thank you, and sorry things got so rough. You really shouldn't come running up to people shouting insults though."

Hanyi snorted. "You're lucky big sis is so nice!"

Her junior sister glanced around up at the sky and tilted her chin up. "My Sis and I are going up there. And we're gonna have a talk with those 'big' fairies of yours. You can come along if you want, and see who's the best!"

Ling Qi's lips quirked up in amusement. As Hanyi turned away, and the cackling little fairies followed after her swooping and whirling around each other through the falling snow. Only the second realm faerie remained behind arms crossed under the clouds, sullenly scraping mud off of her dress.

And Ling Qi doubted she would be far behind.

"Interesting lessons you've been learning," Ling Qi said idly, falling in beside her sister.

"Winter comes. It comes whether some dummy tries to tell it to stop or not. So I don't let little things get in my way," Hanyi said. "Besides. Look at her, she didn't even try to outsing me! I'm not soggy. A Lady can't let an insult like that stand!"

"No, I suppose she can't," Ling Qi chuckled.

Inevitability, huh? She supposed that was a deep component of endings, big or small. Whether it was a glacier, a snowstorm, or the longest, darkest night, it would come and you could only endure it.

That wasn't quite what she was going for as a central theme, but it would touch anything made with endings in mind.

"...So where do we want to go first?" Hanyi asked her.

"I wonder, I think we'll want the upper peaks next, those should still be fairies of the same kind, those that blow down with the seasons," Ling Qi said thoughtfully. "Besides. There's an order to these things."

"I kinda just wanna find the biggest one," Hanyi huffed. "I don't have the patience for small fry."

"Ah, Hanyi, you shouldn't overlook little things," Ling Qi chided. "After all, we are the 'small fry' to plenty of people still."

Her Junior Sister frowned deeply, crossing her arms. "... I guess. When you put it like that, it feels really bad."

"It does," Ling Qi admitted. There was definitely still a fear in her mind, the knowledge that everything she had made, everything she was could be swept away so easily still…

But that wasn't a useful fear. It would remain true, all the way to the top. Tomorrow, maybe the moon would fall from the sky, and all the works of mortals and immortals alike would be dust.

There was no use in fretting over things outside of her ability to affect. "But, Hanyi, small fry can still accomplish many things, you know?"

She gathered a spark of impure qi broken off from the crumbling blockages in her meridians, and pushed it out of her fingertip, flicking the ashy spark at Hanyi, who batted it away with a pout.

"Yeah, I guess they can, huh?" Hanyi said, putting her hands behind her head. "...Will you sing with me, when we get there, Big Sis."

She was glad Hanyi had taken her meaning. She craned her head back, gazing at the giggling procession that followed them, amused at the way the faeries shrieked and scattered under her gaze, as if they had imagined they were being stealthy. "I will, if you'll have me," Ling Qi agreed.

"Of course, Sis is the best at this stuff," Hanyi said. "I guess I've gotten used to people supporting me. Doing all the boring stuff."

Ling Qi laughed under her breath.

"N-not that your singing is boring!" Hanyi exclaimed

"I get it, little sister," Ling Qi said, ruffling her hair. "Now where did I put that messenger paper. I should let Bao Qian know that we're going north."

It would be good to finally test her art against something which would contest her, even if only in this weakened state.

AN: Please Select the concept you would like to focus on in the coming update. The chosen concept will rank up alongside any other XP gains.

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