"How well do you think you can hold under its pressure?" Ling Qi asked. To her eyes, their camp, this little bubble reality in the endless expanse of white was being maintained well, the crushing pressure did not pierce the building walls, only frost the now fusing stones. But, she would rather hear the words from the one performing the technique.
Bo Qian knelt by their fire, which had not so much flared as…. Boiled over, soft gray wood smoke poured out of the charcoal to rise and form a smoky cover over the walls clinging with a sooty weight where it should have blown away. It should have been choking, but somehow the air she breathed was fresh and clear. He grimaced. "It's not a crushing pressure, but a wearing one. I can hold this…. for days honestly, but if we wish to go anywhere, that is another matter."
He looked up at the top of the stone ramparts he had raised, now settled and solid as if they'd be raised to stand by expert masons. "Well,as things stand, I suspect our friend could push harder but…"
"But that isn't its nature," Ling Qi said calmly. "It won't press, or even fight, unless we try to escape I think."
"This smug jerk," Hanyi grumbled. "Not even taking us seriously."
Ling Qi shook her head. "You know better than that Hanyi, it has nothing to do with that."
Her junior sister huffed and crossed her arms. "...Yeah, I know. This is just how she is, huh?"
"Yes, she is," Ling Qi said, looking out beyond the walls, with dancing wisps of silver that briefly pushed past the stone before darting back in to avoid the devouring cold. She couldn;t perceive any center or body to the spirit, just the diffuse featureless whiteness of the snow, so solid now that she could barely even perceive the gusts and flurries kicking through it.
"I'm going to take this slowly. Bao Qian, please…"
"What were we just talking about," He chuckled, flexing the fingers driven into the dark earth, the walls shuddered and settled, becoming somehow even more solid in her senses, a sort of hyper-real density that reminded her of the fortified walls of a castle. The sort of formation enhanced stone that even she would have difficulty passing through with her arts.
She was free to study her opponent now, and so she let her perception flood out on a thin ripple of her qi, spreading to the limits of her domain.
The snows ate at it immediately, a cold leeching feeling that nipped and bit at the edges of her qi, far less elegantly than Huisheng's thieving fingers, but she didn't pull away, not entirely. She fought its pressure… but not as hard as she could, letting the leeched motes carry away into the storm.
Quiet. Quiet. Sings the Song of Snow. Silence. Silence. Cries out the cold.
It wasn't the same. They were different songs, different strains. It was not even the same as Zeqing's.
Whiteout Wonderland. The storm which blurred away the world, where travelers wandered until they stumbled exhausted, and sank into the false warmth which preceded death. Oh yes, cousin to Zeqing, that was what this was, with no mountain to be her own, but no less hungry and territorial for it. But all the same… she could feel the particles of stolen qi whipping out through the blizzard, circulating in its winds even as they were slowly dissolved and drunk.
The spirits whole being was diffuse. They were not hiding in the snow, they weren't dematierialized the way she would be, hiding in her mist. No, she doubted that this spirit even could consolidate itself that way. It was a core being, something solid to resist being overwritten, to keep existing from winter to winter, but it still more phenomena than person.
She could work with that, even if she couldn't contest its raw power, as she was right now.
That diffusion is what she could use to solve this.
She let out a breath and returned to herself.
"Big Sis, you okay?" Hanyi asked worriedly. "Your eyes kinda looked like mine for a second…"
"Did they?" Ling Qi wondered, reaching up, there was a little frost on her cheeks. "I think I have an idea for solving this, but I'm going to need you and Bao Qian to hunker down a little and try to avoid its attention. I need the spirits full attention on me, okay?"
"I can close the field within my walls to muffle us, but you will have to be outside for that," Bao Qian said dubiously.
Ling Qi hummed to herself. "Can I only do that for the finale?"
He frowned. "Just give me the signal, if you're certain."
"I am," Ling Qi said confidently.
"I can't help?" Hanyi asked, looking upset.
"This one really is one only I can talk to properly, I think," Ling Qi said. "We'll get the rest together, junior sister."
"...Okay. Kick their butt big sis!"
She hoped she wouldn't have to try, at least not in the way that Hanyi meant. She pushed her feet against the ground and…
And nothing happened, they remained on earth. Ling Qi sighed, frowning down at herself, at the fine but still mundane silk and fur of her gown.
"Bao Qian, could you raise me up?" She asked. How annoying.
"Hah, Of course."
His fingers, embedded in the dirt, twitched and a circle of stone, a pillar, parted the dirt beneath her feet and sent her up, up toward and through the smoky ceiling of their little redoubt.
She punched through it, and immediately felt the frigid, leeching chill on herself even as she allowed her own Mist to flow out into the featureless void of snow. She felt her qi nipped at chewed, frozen dissolved, wicking away like water, spinning off into the quietly howling winds.
But, she had after all witnessed how a thief could hold their treasures even when they vanished from the pocket.
Hush. Hush. Hush. Sink into the white.
Ling Qi inhaled the frigid air, feeling her qi whorling through the vast circuit of winds surrounding them, and sang back.
Quiet. Quiet. Winds rock cold bones to sleep.
Her voice rippled outward, but not from her own lips. The great diffuse mass of qi around her shook, almost imperceptibly.
Silence? Silence? Lay heavy 'cross the land.
The returning verse was a little different than the quiet cold whispers, a curl of questioning in the tone.
Silence. Silence. Glittering in the hills.
But she sang in the same whisper, the some breathy cruelly playful tone, her voice in brought in synch by the bleeding of her qi into the whiteout.
Blow wind Blow, wipe it all away.
Beyond the fires, beyond the roads, snows quiet sleep.
Even she had a hard time telling her own voice from the spirits as she aligned herself too it further, and very carefully bent the intent with her own. They were, after all, very similar.
The difference lay in purpose. This spirit, for all their power, was a thing of directionless, all consuming hunger. It was…. Sad in a way, probably better that it or she did not have a more humanlike self. If it had, there would be no choice but to destroy it, such a thing could only be a monster which could never be allowed to exist near humans.
Lashing tails, a near skeletal body black lips drawn back over yellowed fangs flecked with foam.
At the very least, she didn't think she could stop Su Ling from getting some practice in, if that was the case.
Surrounded in this hunger, feeling it leech into her bones, the frost creeping over her skin and cracking her fingertips. She breathed out. Purest Want in its primal form. The qi she had fed into it resonated far more strongly than the motes she had stolen from Huisheng resonated with her.
She pushed her qi outward, and ceased to hold back the icy emptiness that surrounded her, letting qi flood into the spirits channels.
She knew Want very well, after all.
+2 Want XP
Please Select the level V insight.
[ ] To want is to live, to grasp, to strive. At the foundation of every bond, in the root of every ambition, threaded through every movement of the world. Discern the deepest want in a soul, and there find the key to its understanding or undoing.
[ ] To Want is to live, to grasp, to strive. At the foundation of every bond, in the root of every ambition, threaded through every movement of the world. In it's severance is despair. In despair lies death.
AN: Heyo folks sorry for the shortness but this one was meant to be one piece with the previous chapter and I didn't want to pad it too much! Will hopefully be back in a better state to write going forward.
