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

Ling Qi thrust her palm out, and her shadow erupted. Skittering claws clung and scrabbled at wet rock, dragging sleek furred bodies that ended in ty whipping scaled piscine tails. Ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred, two hundred and more, a carpet of scales and fur and gnawing biting teeth, descended the underwater tunnel toward her foe.

"Feeling dramatic huh?" Sixiang chuckled.

A little flourish never hurt anything.

Groaning mouths opened, sprouting teeth of chitin and broken bone, pastelike corpseflesh erupted with stringy, barbed tendrils that stabbed out from the wall of oozing flesh climbing from the depths. Rats were impaled, their shrieks distorted by the water, even as they curled in on themselves, gnawing at the barbed tendrils impaling their own bodies. The hunger born from weakness couldn;t be so easily stilled.

Other rats leapt and swam and climbed, darting through their dying brethren and scrabbling up the writhing tendrils. They died by the dozen, and were replaced by two dozen more.

"I hope you'll give me something cooler than another rat this time," Sixiang whispered.

She tilted, her head, considered a moment, and the tenor of her song shifted, for a moment the tide of rats receded into her shadow, and the icy mist crystalizing in the water around her roiled and darkened. Crystals fused with strands of inky shadow, rising from the hems of her gown, spinning something much larger into view.

"Your steed, commander Sixiang."

Her muse cackled in her head, and she felt the rush of chaotic qi as they flowed out through her eyes and ears, infusing the nascent construct.

A booming bark shook the tunnel, a mane of rainbow fur unfurled like a banner, kaleidoscopic wings flared, and launched the horse sized winged wolf whose blank black eyes glittered with Sixiang's amusement impacted the wall of creeping flesh with an awful noise like a boulder falling onto a butchery.

Their howl echoed in the water, and even Ling Qi herself winced as the material… shifted, rock running like wax, water warping in consistency, dead flesh coming apart into strange transmuted chunks as the wall was driven an entire meter back down where it had come from.

The hunger of the least was a potent weapon, the isolation that existed when each hungry mouth turned on each other, scrabbling to be the one who gained a moment's reprieve… That was the vermin king's strength and its weakness.

She knew that it could be done better though. The Wolf God too was a failure of unity, the call of community turned to a tyrant's whip.

Combine, mix, make something better than both.

Her shadow crawled with rats again, but in the passage, in Sixiang's space and material rippling wake, rats swelled and snarled, bulking out, gaining a predators teeth, sleek and amphibious fur shot through with veins of shimmering color, cries halfway between chitters and barks echoed in the passage as the rat wolves followed Sixiang down into the water clouded with rotten blood and impure ichor.

And Ling Qi herself drifted forward.

"Qiyi, cover me completely."

Her gown stirred around her, fabric and thread spun out, swallowed her to the toes and fingertips, inky black and dark purple swatches crawling up her cheeks and netting her hair. Over her eyes, lensed of mirrored silver. It would have blinded her if she was limited to mortal senses, but instead the wisps clinging to the outside of her gown gave her as much vision as the eyes she had been born with.

The tunnel quaked with the motion of the creature, and constructs slammed against the wall beside her head, crushed under a pseudopod of dead flesh the size of a tree trunk. With an idle thought, she commanded rats onto it, scampering and swimming, diving into mouths and gnawing at eyes, burrowing deep into flesh.

She wasn't surprised when she felt that same flesh closing, mouths fusing and pockets of flesh crushed by pressure. The creature had learned from her last strategy. It wouldn't be so easy a second time. She was going to have to put a little more skin into the game.

"Wait. How exactly are you thinking about walking this thing outta here?"

Ling Qi laughed aloud, muffled behind Qiyi. "Just keep disrupting its cohesion, Sixiang."

"I wouldn't ask you to do something I wasn't willing to do."

Sixiang groaned in her mind, but their howl boomed out, once again warping the tunnel, chaotic qi breaking apart corpseflesh around the framework of the wire then tendrils reaching from the liminal, and making them twitch and thrash two as their wings beat, battering the limbs trying to grasp them as their fangs tore bloody chunks from the bubbling half liquid surface, paws scrabbling and yanking as the tarpit of meat trying to swallow them up.

She raised her voice, and carpeted the tunnel in writhing rats and howling wolves, splashing free from the vast shadow she now cast over the tunnel behind her.
"O Piper lord, master of the eightfold depths. In a moment I shall disappear with this limb of your foe. Purge this tunnel without mercy in my wake." Ling Qi called out, over her own song, a spiritual voice reaching into the crystalline channels running through the rock.

"…Strategy accepted."

Ling Qi poured qi into her constructs more and more, the power of her domain flaring out, filling the shadowed passageway with mist and darkness from which only crawled more rats, teeth chattering with endless hunger for the feast. But she did not hang back, she strode forward through the water, boots cracking against briefly borne platforms of ice.

She picked a set of eyes in the mass, and fixed them with a look of challenge. She focused her thoughts. Her domain's mist went black with the force of her intent

This was not their feast. Not their lair. They would lose. They would be driven forth. Go. Starve. Crawl in fear. Die in privation.

The passage rumbled, and Sixiang yelped as the whole mass rumbled, their construct crushed and broken against the wall as the tons of dead flesh surged forward, bubbling and liquid still from her muse's disruptive qi. It split down the center, a vast maw full of gnashing teeth with lips of lashing barbed cilia and crushing tendrils.

It slammed shut around her with a muffled boom.

She felt countless prickles of pressure, jagged razor edges pressed into fabric and flesh, with the pressure to crush stone and crumple metal. Boiling, sizzling fluids, acids and toxins stained Qiyi's fabric, grasping tendrils clutched at her limbs. Choking filthy impurity caked her from head to toe, choking off the expression of her arts the moment her qi left her channels.

"You know I really gotta be more specific when you're making plans with me," Sixiang grumbled.

She was glad Sixiang still trusted her. Could she ask for one more dance?

The muse grumbled, but she felt hands materialize in her own. Sixiang's phantom flesh was warmer than it had been before, she noted idly.

She set her heel against the squirming floor, heel punching through to rock Grinding teeth snapped or tore free, tendrils stretched like taut cord and broke. And Ling Qi spun through the first steps of dance she had learned, Sixiang's hands held tight in hers.

The disrupted, dissolute section of the veil left by Sixiang's rippling qi shimmered and came apart, a hole briefly cut between realms, and the two of them danced through in a vortex of kaleidoscopic qi, water, impurity and liquid meat roared and bubbled, rushing into the gap they had left, spewing out into the formless ocean of color and thought which underlay the fantastical realms of Dream.

Sixiang gave her an unimpressed look as their dance carried them up and out of the spewing rush of oily pollution they had brought with them.

"That. Was. Gross."

"But it worked," Ling Qi chuckled

Qiyi shook violently all across her body, fabric rippling, ribbon tendrils lashing wildly. In her mind she winced at the dresses distressed, keening wail.

"...Extra soaps in your wash tonight," Ling Qi whispered, wincing.

Below the flow was tapering, dirty water rather than overwhelming vileness, the natural pressure between material and physical realms closing the brief gap they had made.

She pushed her perception back through the veil, saw the cool crystal clear water rushing down the suddenly cleared tunnel, scouring the walls of impurity boiling the fragments that remained with a vengeance as the parasite yanked its beared tendrils back away even as many of them burned, severed from the main mass.

Back in the center, the surge of attacks coming up the tunnel was retreating, the creatures panic and hurt palpable to Ling Qi's senses as it withdrew like a shocked beast scorched by a flame.

Ling Qi stepped back into reality, the sensation of Sixiang's hands dissolving as they left the dream.

She re-emerged into the icy water as a sizzling cloud of bubbling water, pure liquid reacting with impurity and…

She felt a wet slap across her masked face and a paper talisman inscribed with impurity wards seized hold across her face.

"So. I may have earned that."

"You definitely earned that, what a ridiculous plan," Li Suyin huffed, as the crust of oily gunk boiled away from Qiyi, drawn into the sealing formation.

Bad wearer. No more gross meat bath. Listen to friends/fellow wearers.

She was a little bit under attack here.

Effective. Enemy in retreat. Pursuit must be made."

Ling Qi huffed, letting the talisman do its work. Well at least someone agreed with her. "The Piper can feel the parasite withdrawing on all fronts. The size of that loss shocked it. We have an opportunity to make for the breach now. If we know where it is…?"

"Earthblood. Vault of frozen fire, crevice which once fed the soul of heat, now deadened."

Li Suyin looked at her expectantly.

"The original breach came through an old volcanic vent, near to the site of the deadened fire crystal," Ling Qi relayed.

"Then we advance down the passage you cleared," Li Suyin said, gesturing to her constructs, who shambled back to her, Wolf and Lion were both cracked, stained and damaged. It was odd that her Evergreen Succession art hadn't shrouded them, something about the mindless automata failed to attract the skein of qi she cast out over her allies.

"I think so as well, though I wonder if we should try to hunt the core of the creature first," Ling Qi said, looking dubiously down the dark passages. "I worry it might disrupt your ritual, even with us on defense. We've shocked it twice now…. I don't know if it will retreat again."

And it had already shown it could learn. How far did that go?

"I believe in your ability to hold it off, and the sealing arrangement does not take too long," Li Suyin said. "Once the seal is in place, the spirit here should be able to scour its own meridians far more easily, with the source of impurity choked off."

That was true, Ling Qi supposed. And it was definitely possible that taking more time to try and hunt the creature down would just give it more time to rally with the connection open.

On the other hand, their intention would be obvious, going for the breach. They would not be the ones holding to a prepared defense this time.

[ ] Hunt the parasite down, you have wounded it awfully, best to finish it and then go for the seal.

[ ] Perform the sealing first, without the connection to the underworld ecosystem, the parasite will not be a threat.