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

"Why don't you take us away, little brother," Ling Qi said. "I have a feeling you might be the better navigator on this journey."

It was only a hunch, but when it came to the liminal, one had to be willing to trust their feelings to an extent, and right now, she felt like the labyrinth of layered city would impede him less than her. Indeed, with the way she had begun to think of history and the past, she felt she might not be much much better at navigating it than she was that first day, despite her greater skill.

Poor Meng Dan might just get lost here forever, if she didn't keep a tight hold on his hand.

What a strange thought. Ling Qi shook it off, turning to her little brother and appearing atop his shell without taking a step, Qiyi's silk billowing around her in an unseen wind. The dress' consciousness was…. Distant. She worried but, it was more like the mind of someone deep in cultivation. She was preserving herself against the dissolving tug of the liminal atmosphere, Ling Qi supposed.

"Okay! Gui can do this."

"I, Zhen, am the one who can do this," his other half scoffed, atop his shell formed from leaf and vine and clinging liquid shadow, a chair not unlike that of his Shrine harness appeared for her to take a seat in. She lowered herself into into it as he began to back away from the edge of the island. The shadowed, ghostly memory of hexagonal clay plates began to whirl around them, immaterial without Xuan Shi here to support their existence.

He reached the far side of the island, looking toward the layered city. And then, her little brother charged. It is hard to call anything in a tortoise's gait a 'run', but his trunklike legs ate up the liminal ground, rocking the island with his weight…. And that momentum flung them from the side of the island, carrying them briefly into the misty air of the bottomless forest.

And as they began to fall, wind screaming past her ears, his legs withdrew into his shell, and she heard the snapping of sparks, and a flush of heat, and then a gutteral roar like the flame in a kiln forge being flared beyond limits by the pumping of a bellows. Ruddy red and orange flame erupted where Zhengui's legs had withdrawn into his shell, and together with her little brother, she soared into the crumbling city of buried histories.

The titanic trees whipped past them, and the curling witchback paths which carved through the chaotic tangle of piled buildings blurred by. Countless whispering secrets all clawing at her ears as they went, pleading to be heard, to be known, to not sink forever into the ruin and be forgotten.

But neither of them were here for those kinds of secrets today.

"This a sad place," Gui rumbled, his head drawn back, neck wrinkled not quite pulled entirely into his shell. "Like if the Dead place in the Sect, but broken, all the names wiped off."
"Fuel that will never become flame, how unsightly," Zhen hissed morbidly. "Are you secure big Sister?"

"I am," Ling Qi said, the howling wind and roar of the jetting flame was no impediment to speaking or hearing, not for her, but she did squint into the distance. "...And that is a good way to describe this place… a crossroads and a graveyard for things forgotten."

"Gui does not like it much. But look, sister, we will need to go through there!"

She looked ahead, toward where she had spied green in the distance where buildings of countless ages had collapsed in a roar of mass demolition. There was a vast cloud of dust hanging in the air now between them and it, and thye would need to swing very far out to avoid it. Ling Qi narrowed her eyes, considering. "Keep steady little brother, we can handle it.

It was like hitting a soft, dry cushion. Dense, dust so thick and cloying and rough, it clung and choked like she was trying to breath in a grungy curtain

A curtain that swiftly caught fire, a rippling ring of roaring explosion and flame, igniting by her brother, the dust of ages going up in renewals ignition. She exhaled herself, and the wind roared, whipping the flames to lurid orange and bluebell brightness, allwell away from her skin. The shroud of obfuscating ignorance, for that was what the dust was beneath the physical, scattered, and they soared on.

Onward, onward down a canyon carved through the now all encompassing labyrinth of ruin and trash. Further plumes of cloying ignorance roaring from the crumbling ruins which formed the walls of the canyon.

"....Soaring high won't work, Gui thinks. We will just get lost in the dust and fog."

"We must navigate here, take the burrowing trail, follow in the path," Zhen said uncharacteristically without flourish, his voice serious and focused.

"Take us away little brother, I will keep us stable and intact, wherever we fly," Ling Qi replied.

The flames rumbled, and they shot down the crumbling canyon, weaving through masses of falling tile and foundation, curving around plumes of dust and darting beneath leaning crumbling temples and pagodas.

And far, far ahead, Ling Qi caught site of an immense, lashing tail cracking against the layered ruins, and bringing down enough rotting infrastructure to bury a mountain.

She felt Zhengui's acceleration as they jeeted on toward the oncoming avalanche and the vast churning cloud of dust proceeding it, felt the heat flare beneath his shell and saw the magmatic light flare between her scales. She braced herself too, the melancholy song that shrouded her rising, more strident and triumphant as shadows writhed and the dream bent circling phantom hexagon plates growing starker and more real just for a moment.

They hit the avalanche, and punched through, in a roaring spear of flame and determination. Tons upon tons of crushing stagnation and loss fell upon them in the guise of worked stone and carved wood, and where they met it, it disintegrated, charred black and blown away in an instant. Yet it was no quick barrier to pierce, and Ling Qi found herself losing track of time as they punched through layer after layer of ruin, the sphere of charring ruddy light they formed shrinking infinitesimally by the minute.

But she felt no doubt, even as the blackness shrunk in, as the heat became enough to boil a mortal alive. Because neither of them would be stopped by mere unfocused ignorance and doubt.

They erupted from the other side of the avalanche in an expanding ball of fire, casting off the shell of ash which had sought to choke them in a rippling ring.

Their destination loomed ahead.

The beast, Kohatu, she thought was far larger than the corpse in the cave could have ever been. Her body was long and flat, with a sinuous serpentine tail and a wider flatter body. She had legs, splayed out horizontally to her body, short and powerful akin to a dragons, and they were what dragged her with such speed through the monument to buried and forgotten secrets that was the layers city, tearing into stone and wood and bulling her vast form through the mountains of ruin and debris

Unlike a dragon though, the spirit beasts neck was short and thick, and she had no horns nor whiskers, but a broad almost shovel-like head. As close as they were now, the cacophony of her advance through the ruins was deafening and the grit and dust in the air was a constant, the irritating particles stinging her throat and her eyes despite the best efforts she made to keep it away from her.

Zhengui's eyes were fixed on her in fascination. Ling Qi hated to admit that something in his expression made her stomach churn with an ugly, envious feeling.

There was an almighty crash as the titanic lizards head and forelegs crashed against the foundations of a crumbling palace, and she began to dig down instead of through.

"Ah! We need to catch up!" Gui shouted.

Ling Qi's seat rattled as they accelerated, flames roaring out in bright jets that launched them toward Kohatu with a roar.

A roar that for the first time, the burrowing beast seemed to notice. It was a subtle thing, nearly imperceptible. A brief twitch of reaction in one reptilian claw.

"Zhengui down!" Ling Qi screamed.

He obeyed without question, and that meant that they were able to ust barely weave beneath the whipping tip of a titanic tail, the crack of thunder that roared as it broke the air a detonation that sent them spinning crazily, nearly crashing a winding path of packed together fossilized wood surrounded by straw topped huts in one of the canyon walls.

Her little brother's flames set the roofs alight as he course corrected, dragging them back into the sky. Kohatu's claws and snout were back in the denser ruins at the bottom of the canyon though, digging into the denser fossilized memories and secrets at the foundations of the layers city, stone and dust and chunks of buildings sprayed backward like clods of dirt from a burrowing rabbit, leaving the to weave through the dangerous rain as they made their way closer at a warier pace.

"Why would she do that?" Gui wondered, he sounded hurt.

"...I don't think she's looking very closely, we probably only register as a pest, she can't really… 'see' us yet I think," Ling Qi comforted. She could observe that in the beasts posture and demeanor, there was no recognition of them as a meaningful presence, that flick of the tail had been no more than a person waving a fly away from their head while they worked.

"So we will have to make her notice us at all before we can talk…." Gui wondered. "But, I don't want Big Sister to be hurt."

"We'll manage," Ling Qi said as they circled, Zhengui not quite daring to bring them closer again, not yet.

Should they…

[ ] Remain back and try to call out. Only possible due to the development of your domain, you would have to hope the shade would deign to listen…

[ ] Fly in slowly so as to avoid any more unthinking blows, and try to draw her attention by landing somewhere near.

[ ] Take the risk, you must get her attention before she digs fully underground, zoom in, flaring qi approaching Kohatu's head to force her to acknowledge you.