A pink-white pearl rolled across the pile of rubble, bumping against a fallen woman's bloodstained fingers. She twitched.
"It's time to take that back," the Golden Devil said, kneeling before the woman, her fingers laced together in front of her. The fallen woman looked up, squinting against the sunlight and flames that burned through the girl's golden hair.
It hurt to raise her head and when Adrianna looked back down and saw the Pearl, she scrambled to pick it up. Her arm hurt so much,
everything hurt who was she kidding. She was barely breathing, her right arm
gone and a chunk of her chest along with it. But Adrianna Rossi was alive, her wounds cauterized by the grace of the Flame-Child. She gurgled and heaved herself upright, a strong hand under her shoulder helping her up.
When she stood, she wobbled, and the two women took in the disaster unfolding around them. They were at the bottom of a crater, a street having fallen in and only their own skills and tough bodies had allowed them to survive. Above the crater, fires burned and they could hear screaming and distant explosions. Many columns of smoke filled the air all around them. The Flame-Child had catastrophically lost control, too much of the network damaged.
Adrianna clenched the Pearl tight. It was their only hope to give the Flame-Child back some control and save the City, and themselves, from incineration. She started walking towards the Temple. Cerina did not immediately follow, to her confusion. The golden woman was reaching down to an unconscious form sprawled out in the rubble. Merrcio was alive, because Cerina had protected him, but he was suffering from ruinous Qi exhaustion.
The Devil slung him over her wide shoulder and began feeding Qi from her system into the Acupoints at the base of his spine. "Go, I can follow."
Adrianna was tempted to argue but… time was of the essence. She stuffed her objections away and hauled herself out of the crater, Cerina right behind her and scaling the wall like a mountain goat. When they emerged, the pair found themselves south of the lake, southwest of the Sect Temple. Ambervale looked like an earthquake had struck it, buildings collapsed into the tunnels below for many blocks in every direction. These tunnels must have collapsed after the destruction during the fight with Edric, made worse by the Flame-Child's power running rampant through the underground.
Cerina felt a dull horror at the devastation, a bleak chill as she watched the green flames burn up and through the rubble. Thousands must have died instantly, to produce this eerie silence that smothered the world. Even the Sect Temple was not untouched, a tower's upper floors having fallen into the lower levels, transforming it into a giant torch. A majestic image, shattered.
And yet, she saw intact buildings in the far distance, closer to the walls. Even though its heart had been crushed, there remained buildings still standing in the northern and eastern edges of the city.
There were still people who could evacuate. What would happen after they returned that pearl? "What will you do, when this is all over?" She asked her companion.
"Rebuild." Adrianna answered. It was the only thing she knew how to do, now that Edric was dead and her guilt… was not gone, as much as she hoped it would be. Damn him for starting all of this and damn
her for helping him. She had hoped to find the people causing grudges, to find the true culprits behind the conflicts he was embroiled in. But all she'd done was enabled him and his betrayal.
The sound of the crunching wreckage under their feet weighed on them both. People were starting to recover now, voices on the edge of hearing and moving silhouettes moving slowly over the collapsed buildings. But the two cultivators continued on towards the Sect Temple. While Adrianna led the way, Cerina remembered what she had said to Rina so many years ago.
…"I will not shirk. I will not cease. I intend to grasp the Fourth Keystone, and the Emperor's Pillar, and I am certain this is the Legion for me. I love the Clan, I can't do anything else."
…
Cerina met Rina's gaze confidently. "The Mountain Bell disasters showed me that the Clan needs a long term power that can assist them all. Qi Condensation to Core, and beyond. In the far future, perhaps I could be a tool, the lever, that blinds the Heavens at the right moment…
She'd told a truth then - and talked a big game as well. She wanted to be loyal, and so she was. She was a weapon, a tool for use by the Clan and the Grand Elder. And that certainly meant something, but now in this place she realized it had mostly just been words. If she was to be a weapon, how much of a choice did she have about her Path? How important was her sense of self to her purpose?
She'd never answered these very important questions implied by her statements. Now, in the blasted remains of a forgotten city, running past mortals sobbing over the wreckage of their lives, she wondered.
Her purpose was to aid the Clan, because she loved the Clan. But what did that mean past the big talk and pretensions she'd given to Rina? It was not just killing the Clan's enemies. That's what the Vanguard were for. Instructing others did not answer the question. Not entirely. Here in this city of disaster, she realized part of the answer. Her sense of self was what led her to this Path, and her Path was what would enable her to identify the proper moment to blind the Heavens.
Paradoxically, for a loyal tool of the Clan, her sense of self was a critical pillar. Her emotions rose into a turmoil of elation and fear over the lingering horror of the day. She almost laughed as she began to slow. Because there could not be one without the other, her choices alone must shape her Path - no one could shape it for her, no one would point out the Moment to blind Heaven for her. She would have to recognize it on her own and offer herself at the correct time.
If she wanted to blind the Heavens, then she must retain her self, the nature that formed the root of her philosophy. She needed to be a tool that knew when it must be applied. Now was the time to prove it.
She stopped, Merrcio still unconscious on her shoulder. "Go ahead, you will be faster alone."
Adrianna snapped a glare back, surprised. "And what will you be doing then? Are you not coming with me to the Core? I cannot reach the Core on my own, not with this maiming!" She barked. She did not have enough pride left to hide her weakness.
"There are people I need to save here. We can save more people if we split up." Cerina said, gesturing to a woman digging through a collapsed home fifty meters to her right. If Adrianna got to the Temple faster, maybe she could clear the way faster. Maybes, and maybe nots. But it was important that she
tried. And she had seen the guilt that riddled Adrianna, the possibility would be important to her too.
The Molt-Diviner looked and her objection crumpled.
Damn this golden girl, she growled to herself. But...
"
Hurry then, you bleeding heart," she spat back. Then she leapt away, squeezing out more speed now that Cerina was not holding her back.
Now Cerina just had to time things so that she could help people and also arrive in time to help Adrianna through the final stretch. She set Merrcio down, enough Qi cycling through his system now that he'd stabilized and begun respiring Qi on his own again, and went to help the mortal digging through her destroyed home.
***
Thirty minutes later
Merrcio jerked awake with a gasp. He coughed and then old training and habits steadied him. His heartbeat faded from his ears and he registered where he was - laid against a brick wall, on a street a block or so away from the ring street surrounding the Sect Temple. He surveyed his city, pushing his black hair out of his eyes, his other hand checking the sword at his hip.
The street was mostly intact, but worry thickened in his throat as he saw the columns of thick black smoke rising above the rooftops. His stomach went cold when he saw the Temple was burning too. He heard distant voices down a nearby alley and levered himself upright. He was still weak, his Vitae system strained and aching.
His foundation bore cracks now, cracks that had him worried his Acupoints would not remain open. He'd have to spend years fixing the damage he'd done to himself. But he could accept that. Where were the ladies? He had to help them somehow. Chivalry and common sense demanded it. "Oi! Cerina, m'lady! Where are you?" He called out.
The voices went silent, and he readied himself. No one would strike him, not now, with all of
this going on. But he had an image to maintain and so he dusted himself off as best he could and fixed his hair. A looming shadow emerged from the alley, "You're awake!" A familiar and excited voice shouted. His cyclopean friend emerged and smiled brightly at him. "Hah! Looking good." Ah, she always knew what to say to make a man feel happy.
He joined her in the alley mouth and saw she had been speaking to a small band of people, ash covered and weary. They brightened when they saw him. He gave them a salute and a smile, and turned to her. "What happened while I was indisposed?"
Her smile dropped and she leaned close to whisper. "The city suffered a series of tunnel collapses and even more fires as parts of the network exploded." She tilted her head back at the mortals. "These folks say there's an Expert helping to control things, which is good, because that gives Adrianna time in the Temple."
"We need to get going then," Merrcio said, double checking his sword belt. Cerina's smile returned.
"Okay! I'll catch up after I finish here." She said and turned to speak to the others again. Merrcio took his cue and started jogging towards the Temple. He quickly reached the ring street circling the Temple and realized the wall was pockmarked by holes of melted brick and collapsed stone. With these arrays so close to the Flame-Child they must have suffered particularly badly.
Girding himself with a pained breath he leapt up and through one of those holes, the heat licking at his skin. His Acupoints burned as he leapt, Vitae sputtering through them. But he landed and rolled well enough to start running towards the main stairway. Coughing, he pushed himself forward. He had to find Adrianna.
The Sect Temple Hill was a sheer mass of black rock similar to a mesa. No human could scale it without magic, the rocks incredibly sharp and carved with defensive arrays. And yet, it was
hot now. The air warped this close to the hill and to his anger and dismay he could see that parts of it had melted like wax, overwhelmed by the heat of malfunctioning arrays. At least the stairway was mostly intact when he reached it.
Hot through the soles of his boots though. He dashed up the steps, one hand on the hilt of his sword. The stairway was a looming switchback and far above his head the Temple burned.
Would the sky fall next? He wondered, incredulity at something he'd known since he was a child burning like kindling held back by the practical necessity of saving his city.
As he climbed above the walls on the switchback he could look out over his home and his heart sank. It had fallen, a deep depression filling the center. The lake had spilled over its banks and was flowing into the southern district. Fires burned in every district, pulling buildings greedily into their green maws.
How much of this would they be able to save?
He put his head down and sprinted up the steps, cycling his Vitae according to the few pages from the manual that he had been given. In, hold. Out, in quickly, and hold. Out for a long breath. The steps blurred under his feet. The wind howled in his ears.
A flicker of yellow caused him to look out again and then he saw her soaring up the wall like an arrow in flight.
"Hot hot hot hot hot! Merrcio, give me your hand!" Cerina shouted up at him. He stuck his arm out. Was she going to carry him up?
His shoulder jerked
hard, stealing his breath, and then his feet left the ground. Merrcio found himself slung across a long back, the pair of them leaping from switchback to switchback right up the hillside. Spitting her hair out of his mouth he held on for dear life as Cerina soared. WIth a final leap she jumped over the lip of the hill and landed hard on the beautiful tile laid before the burning doors of the Temple of the Molt-Diviners.
Cerina let him down. "Hot! Ow, ugh." She grumbled, hopping on her feet for a moment. Cycling her Qi, she joined him in looking at the devastation reaping through the temple. Windows melting and running like crystal tears, the wooden beams creaking and moaning, the stone cracking, the roofs falling in with distant booms. Black smoke with a terrible green hue in its core billowed out in great clouds from every opening.
But the doors were open, for all that they burned and belched foulness. Merrcio advanced, holding his collar over his face and diving through the doors with Cerina at his heels. Fortune was with them, the sheer heat of the air forcing the smoke to rise and eat at the ceiling. The grand entrance hall of the Molt-Diviners was floored in white marble blocks with graceful pillars styled to look like swarms of gray lizards had come to rest upon them.
Balconies rose to either side, the left side belching flame. But Cerina knew where they must go. Down, where the dark weight of the Earth could help contain the Flame. The two cultivators raced across the entrance hall and towards the far end, a curving wall ridged by sturdy buttresses of pinkish stone.
Before the remains of a pair of great iron doors, the marble was blackened by the remains of intense heat. A huge explosion had stretched the doors, twisted them like a child with clay and left dripping on their hinges. The air was so hot it might instantly slay a mortal. They continued. They had to find Adrianna.
The first sign of her was in the arched hallway past the door, a third of the way down. A passageway had split off and then been blocked by the wreckage of fallen pillars. That wreckage had been pierced by a blast of water and the cleared rubble was still steaming. The passage revealed itself to be a dark path which slanted down into the hill and away from the light of day above.
The smoke rose from below, clinging to the ceiling, thick with a smell of cinnamon gone sickly. It seared at their eyes and soft tissues, forcing Cerina to use her magics to purify the air ahead of them. They descended behind the protective curve of a curling wave of Wind, and above them the roar of the flames was joined by shaking and rumbling, the building groaning as its final minutes neared.
Alcoves zipped past them and in every one was a strange corpse. They were made of brass and iron, organs like gears and ribs of metal, all marked by arrays and talismans. These defenders had been broken by the power of their master, melted and shattered by the power suddenly forced through them. No longer would their swords rise to impose invaders.
And yet a handful still served as conduits for their master's rampaging Qi, bolts of greenish plasma leaping across the passage to carve burning holes into the walls and floors. The majority seem to have been more permanently disconnected by Adrianna - arrays carved out, melted, or the automata torn apart. The Foresighted Eye buzzed on Cerina's finger as she guided them through the chaos that remained, the green light illuminating their dancing bodies in shutterstop motion.
Merrcio marveled at the raw power on display around him. A voice in him wondered how much he could help, but a second shut that down. Trust. He would have his time on the stage. His eyes sharpened by focus and his foundation held steady by his will he shepherded his strength. A howling rose ahead of them, higher and higher and higher as their steps neared the end of the path. The light of an inferno illuminated their faces in the darkness, revealing a domed chamber at the end of the path.
Flying buttresses held up the roof, and set into that roof were arrays carved into a ring of tiles to form the shape of a great salamander. Green fire rained down from them, reaching for a spiral stair that descended into the dark below. The air twisted and churned with heat mirages, a great oven, all of the walls coated in flame that spewed from failing arrays that resembled scaled coils. In their little bubble of protective magic they ducked below the flames and dashed for the stairs.
Merrcio almost tripped on the rubble concealed by the heat haze, but a strong hand caught him and they leapt into the stairwell. And straight down its open middle, the air and the stairs rushing past. Mercifully the air cooled as they fell, symbols like rain glowing a bright green and producing a wave of cooling air - some emergency control system activated and using principles of consumption and negative feedback to hold the flames at bay. It wouldn't be enough for much longer.
With a yell Cerina slammed a hand onto a stair, denting the metal deeply. Her joints creaked angrily and she held back a curse, but they stopped, Merrcio held in her other arm. They swung over the abyss. With a twist and a heave she flung them onto a lower stair and the two took deep breaths, thankful for the brief respite.
Far above them the crackling roars and howls of destruction continued unabated. They'd be trapped down here - but Cerina did not pay much mind to thoughts of escape. Instead she set her foot onto the next step and descended with purpose. Merrcio could feel it too. It was almost time.
Cerina looked back as he hesitated, concern flashing across her face. He waved her down. "Go, this old dandy is just ruminating on the drama of the moment."
He shook his head. "Here's hoping we don't all burn to death," he finished, voice grim.
She chuckled. "We won't," her voice certain, the power in her soul climbing higher and higher.
Soon.
The moment passed.
The stairs were more of that obsidian-like iron, but strangely rough and Cerina was grateful that they still remained only worryingly hot rather than near molten. They took the stairs two or three steps at a time, the metal ringing under their feet. The air as they descended became almost abrasive, scratching at their skin and buzzing in their ears.
The rampaging Qi growing stronger below them was the heart of this, trying to scrape them raw and force its way inside. They'd die from this before long, their bones transformed into glowing kindling. And even worse, near the bottom the heat returned, the power of the emergency array no longer reaching this close to the source.
With every breath heavier in their chests, they reached the end of the stair and a vast structure was revealed to them through the heat haze. They stood on the rim of a massive bowl-like chamber, tiered steps descending to the center where a great moat had been carved around a ziggurat of blackest iron.
From every tier of that ziggurat rose tall columns of metal and each of them glowed orange-white from the molten heat. They steamed, terrible fumes rising from their bubbling forms, and dripped down the sides of the ziggurat to fill the containment moat. The smell of burning flesh and sick cinnamon and molten metal wrapped sharp clawed fingers around their throats and squeezed, sending both of them into fits of coughing until Cerina pushed it away with the Winds.
"There!" Merrcio shouted, pointing down towards the moat, one arm over his mouth. There they saw a pale green light atop the staff of a familiar woman. Upon the bridge Adrianna struggled forward, a shield of watery magic shining around her from the Pearl clenched in her teeth.
"Adrianna!" Cerina shouted, cupping her hands around her mouth. The woman paused and looked back.
Her staff rose and waved, clearly urging them forward. The two First Realm cultivators were already moving. After bouncing down the tiers, they reached the woman and she glared at both of them.
"Finally!" She growled around the gem in her teeth. "Come on then!" The Expert had clearly been weakened significantly in opening the way through the burning Temple, slowed enough that Cerina came to her side and helped lift her up.
The three cultivators huddled under the shield and moved as fast as they could across the bridge towards the great bronze doors of the ziggurat. Cerina wondered if this was the true Temple - what did the Molt Diviners call it? But questions like that did not matter. When they reached the foot of the doors Cerina saw a strange depression surrounded by the coiled form of a salamander with a human-like face and Adrianna approached this strange lock.
Raising her staff she inserted it into the depression and a sudden pulse of energy traveled from her abdomen and up into the door. The salamander glowed bright blue, the Pearl pulsing in time with the light. A line of light extended up the doors, red-white reaching fingers of terrible radiance out to caress the tiny humans.
From the chamber beyond a horrible bubbling voice cried out in agony. "Too much too much too much too much toooooo muuuuuuuuch! I feel it I feel it I feel it! Mother!" Words became a scream of torturous pain. A wave of charnel heat washed out of the chamber, needles pricking against their skin and blood welling up from their skin at the bite of the Qi.
They could not see the bearer of that voice, because a forest of enormous and rotating brass-colored plates inscribed with ancient arrays filled the chamber from floor to distant ceiling - radiators, many of them damaged and partially melted. The sound of them churning the air violently filled their ears. One of the radiators flashed and a blast of fire leapt at them. Adrianna whipped her staff across the flame and sent it spinning into another plate.
"Fuck."
She threw her staff at Merrcio and spat the Pearl into her one remaining hand. She didn't need it anymore, and it'd keep him alive out here for a few minutes. She had that much gratefulness left in her.
She looked up at Cerina. "We must go, through those, and reach the Flame-Child."
Cerina activated the Foresighted Eye and she saw the plates multiplied by their future-shadows, some spurting flame. She nodded to the Expert. She could do this. That left one member of their party, however. She looked at Merrcio. "Stay here, please. We don't know what will happen when this play ends."
He held tight to the staff in his hands. Even before she had spoke, a cold realization had started to prickle up his spine, clear through the pain of being this close to the Flame-Child. A horrible premonition that something terrible was coming. He coughed, fighting off the static-like numbness in his chest and nodded. "I know my part." He said, sounding calmer than he truly felt. At least he could already feel the staff giving him strength.
He turned to find a place to hide out here and hoped this borrowed strength would be enough to survive.
"Well if
you're all done now, I have a city to save." Adrianna said acidly. Merrcio got the distinct impression of Cerina rolling her eye with only a tilt of her head and the huge cyclops followed the Expert into the ziggurat.
The Foresighted Eye buzzed on Cerina's finger, her other hand around Adrianna's waist. The shorter woman held the Pearl up, its light guiding them through the swooping shadows created by the spinning arrays. The voice of the Flame-Child echoed around them, calling out in wordless agony again and again, painfully loud over the churning of machinery.
As they passed the fifth spinning plate, Cerina called out. "Go left!" Together the women lurched away from the sudden blast of fire, sweeping past their right and charring the air with the taste of ash. They picked their way through the maze of spinning metal, this trial of endurance made worse by the sheer heat robbing them of all air to breathe until Cerina drew upon her Qi to stir the Winds with life.
Soon she'd be drained dry and have to rely on the last of her Spirit Stones. "Duck!" She gasped, both of them leaping to the ground as three bursts of fire filled the air above them. Adrianna hauled herself forward, keeping a death grip on the Pearl, more and more arrays venting energy above them. Cerina followed at her side, until the fire let up and they could stand again.
The next obstacle was the worst yet; Adrianna saw vapor, reddish steam rising from between the plates and as they approached they realized it was boiling
blood, as hot as molten metal and flowing across the floor in great coagulating streams. "Help me! Help me Mother! Where are youuu-!" The great voice demanded, and then choked, more screams ripped from its chest.
Adrianna reached up and dared to call upon more of the Pearl's power. This time the shield expanded, swelling like a growing bubble and then released a torrent of water, washing away the river of blood in front of them. Cerina was ready to pick her up and race through the new path before it closed again. Past the plates she could begin to see a great vertical slab of red rock, a twisting shadow writhing upon it.
The source of the great voice neared. But here, this close to the Flame-Child, the plates had suffered the greatest damage. Most were almost entirely gone and the women had to dodge flecks of molten metal being flung their way. The whirr of the plates was more of a pained keening, spinning so fast that the anchors holding them to floor and ceiling were coming loose.
The end started as a loud bang, the slamming of metal on metal echoing through the Core. "No! No no no no no no no no!" The Flame-Child pleaded. Cerina looked right, and the future revealed a storm of shrapnel and regulator plates sent flying directly at them. They were so close, she could see a clearing in this forest of metal, just ahead. But there was no way to react in time to the blades of metal raining down upon them, no way her fading Qi could fling Adrianna far enough ahead.
Yet, her Path demanded she do so.
The Dao was sourceless and formless. Cerina knew that many cultivators did not see the Dao as a benevolent force - only a way to codify their understanding of the universe and their reasons for advancement. To treat the Dao otherwise was a matter of faith. And yet… in this moment, she believed in her Path. All she had was hope in an impossible situation.
The hope that her Path would not abandon her. And in this timeless moment the Dao, the greatest teacher, rewarded her faith and revealed a secret to the student. The wave in her soul reached its peak and then released itself into her body.
Her feet settled, an impossible vitality rising through her as she stepped into the 13th Heavenstage. Her arms moved before thought, the Path guiding her Qi into two resonating spirals - one flung Adrianna through the last of the plates to her fate. The second caught her exhaled breath and with the last third of her Qi expanded that breath into a spreading wall of Wind.
Weirding Mountain Art: Fivefold Stormwall
The wind swelled into a great phantom hand and slapped aside the storm of molten blades headed her way, clearing the radiators around her. Cerina collapsed from the effort, gasping for breath as she held herself up with her hands. Vision blurred and head throbbing, she looked up and smiled when she saw Adrianna rising to her feet, the Pearl still in her hand.
"Zhuwei! Zhuwei! I can help you! I can give you back your Heart!" The Expert called out to the great and terrible Spirit Beast in front of them.
A great slab of red rock thrust up from the floor and embedded into that slab was an awful figure. The coiled shed of a salamander, glowing red blood pulsing through the paper-like sheets of flesh. Its chest was carved open, flaps of molted skin hanging like curtains to reveal ribs, its fleshy hands pulling its own chest further apart - searching and searching for something that was no longer there.
The flesh ran from its round skull, sizzling and popping like liquid. So full of blood and so hot that its face was melting like red wax and viscera, running over its eye sockets and bubbling grotesquely in its mouth with very human-like teeth. It lurched through the air, trying to pull itself free from the slab.
"Mother! Motherrrrrrrr! Help meeeeeeeeee!" The delirious spirit shrieked. Red light swelled in a bubble upon its skull and then it burst, a geyser of more burning blood set free, its shrieks warbling and tearing at their ears.
Adrianna wound back her arm and tossed the Pearl with all the precision she could muster. It shimmered, blue-green emerging from the pink shell, and flew straight as an arrow between Zhuwei's hands into the gap in its chest. A blinding flash of blue light and pulse of cool air blew back their hair, sending Adrianna to her knees. The suffering of the beast ended in the same moment, cool Qi suffusing its tormented body and quelling the endless stream of Flame rising from its Core.
Cerina's sight returned a moment later, spots dancing in her Eye. "Cerina! Get up!" Merrcio shouted at her, voice muffled by her disorientation. She took a deep breath, trying to feed on the Qi in the air, give herself
something to work with. But her new ascension provided her a different kind of strength, allowing her to get to her feet. She could not run, but she turned and started to stumble, arms catching her as pins and needles chased each other through her body.
There was a pop and her ears cleared. "...gotcha, up, come on big girl," Merrcio reassured her as he hefted her across his shoulders and started to
run.
Why were they running?
She looked back and saw an entirely new horror. Where there had been Adrianna and the Flame-Child, everything behind them was now losing color and breaking up into a churning sea of dull gray blocks. Everywhere they looked the reality of the trial was breaking down, the hill coming apart around them and flowing away, space twisting until they ran through the city of Ambervale.
High above them the sky lost its sun, becoming black and featureless. The ground under their feet leaped and shivered, more gray blocks churning under the dirt. But Merrcio would not be stopped, applying his experience as an actor used to unsteady set pieces and the thrill of combat.
He raced towards a glowing white crack in reality, Cerina desperately reaching into her bag to swallow down the last of her Spirit Stones. The actinic taste cleared her disorientation, and she used the Qi to lighten her weight. Under the sudden ease of his burden, Merrico managed to reach the last ten feet before the crack in spacetime.
However, he knew something she did not. They wouldn't make it together. He'd known since he picked her up. With a heave and a roar the dandy flung her off his shoulders and through the crack in space. She yelped in surprise, suddenly realizing what he had done. She threw out a hand towards him, trying to pull him through with the Wind.
Merrcio dove for the portal, his hands passing through the threshold. But then the world swallowed him, the portal slicing through his wrists with the inevitability of space itself as it snapped closed. His hands fell in a twirl of blood to the floor, and Cerina landed hard on the floor - alone again.
***
His hands lay there in a small pool of slowly spreading blood. She hauled herself upright and looked around in the faint and sourceless gray light. She sat on broken cobblestones in the ruins of Ambervale beneath a deep black sky, the city's walls long fallen and most of the buildings left as simple wreckage piled upon each other in decrepit failure. Craters dotted the area, spreading across a landscape as desolate as the surface of the Moon.
Ten feet in front of her was the shell of a house, the roof and two sides fallen in, the only remainder being the front and left walls. Not a soul was visible. She looked back and saw the reward altar behind her. A surreal disconnection settled onto her brain, and her heart thudded in her chest. She choked on a growl and hissed out a long breath. "Fuck you then, Heaven."
She turned away and swept up his hands, wrapping them in loose bandages and carefully placing the seeping package into her P.A.C.K. Her brain was already concocting ideas to use them as anchors, means to track him back down. Because she was going to get him back now. He'd be the first person she would free from this prison.
A cheerful ping behind her made her back hunch. She glared over her shoulder at the reward altar. On it, cradled in an iridescent fractal nest of cracks in spacetime was a single pink flower bud, yet to bloom. She walked across the cold stone, her robe swishing quietly and threaded her fingers through the cage of space to grasp the bud gently.
It was soft, pliant, and smelled faintly of anise and cherry and honey. It also shifted softly between her finger tips, little tendrils emerging from its base and questing across her fingers. It wanted a host. A parasitic reward? Then it would be a contest of host and parasite. Cerina popped the bud into her mouth, quickly pressing it against her cheek with her tongue.
Sap that tasted like sharp, acidic, burning wine burst across her mouth. She stumbled as her vision doubled, crashing against the altar as dizziness overtook her. Then her hand flew to her face as the flesh of her cheek and brow boiled, bubbling with the passage of the blossom. Spiking pain and cracking sounds filled her skull. There was a pop and it suddenly ripped from her temple, blood running down her face. She screamed, and the bud expanded its gore soaked petals into a vibrantly blooming white-gray sunflower. Greedily drinking at her Qi and her blood, it rustled without any wind.
Cerina flopped to the ground, breathing hard. Her chest was burning, her limbs were uncoordinated and tingling, and the moments between her breaths seemed to contort at random. The stones seemed to be shaking under her. In one moment her heart beat a mile a minute, the next she thought she heard two, three hearts, then none. Coughing hard she gathered her rampaging Qi and leashed it back to her Path. Grinding her teeth as her heart steadied she flipped over and hauled herself upright, keeping a firm grip on her strangely jittering limbs.
With a steady stance, she paused. Why was the floor still shaking? She scanned the space she was now trapped in, Eye roving over the ruins around her. They were brighter now and with a deep forboding she looked up to the peak of the sky and saw a hole in the blackness. A ring of gray fire burned up there, immense like the sun in a dreadful eclipse and the pit in its center pulled at her soul. It
wanted. To hurt, to slay, to eat.
JOIN ME it seemed to whisper.
Movement in the corner of her eye made her yank her bewitched gaze back down and she saw cracks of that same sickly gray light worming their way across the ruins with a sound like ice breaking. One such snap announced the wrecked house in front of her falling. Sickly gray light emerged from it and shadows wriggled in that light.
Hands. A hundred hands hauled nearly a hundred bodies out of their graves all around her as she spun in place, her fists coming up and adrenaline steadying her twitching body. Like the dead were fused with the city itself, they pulled their gray corpse flesh from bricks and rotting wood and ash, stretching these materials like putty and bile over their corpses as armor. In a terrible flood of flesh and hatred and cracking stone, they came. Over it all a deafening wail rose.
How many had she not saved?
No century of glimmering shields and bright swords faced her. It was a boiling sea of blood and teeth and fingernails that
hated her, every face wailing and every arm clawing their way up just for the chance to face her.
Ninety three hatred twisted faces snarled at her, surrounding her and clenching corpse-flesh fists.
And all of them stood within the 9th Heavenstage, empowered by the rage of Heaven. Their weapons manifested next, spectral lances, swords, axes, billhooks. Their ephemeral edges hissed and as one the Shattered Century raised them and charged. A ring of spearheads leapt for her.
In seconds the distance was swept away entirely, spears perforating the air where her head had been. And yet she knew herself, an instinctual grasp of biomechanics formerly impossible to her allowing her to dodge the first wave. She dove low and swept across the ground to crush the knees of a spectre into splintered pulp. A sphere of Wind blossomed from her yell, throwing more spectres aside, giving her space.
The anger in her gut pulled a wide, feral smile across her face. "Fine then!" She drew on the Gravestone Herb, that buzzing sap sinking straight into her brain. Her heart beat like a hummingbird's wings. She cackled, a deep laugh that sent her sprawling into another spectre.
More! And more of that sap came, every drop of Qi fed into the flower transformed into more consciousness distorting speed.
Her brain felt like it was sizzling, bubbling, popping as she unleashed seven attacks in a tenth of a second. The snap of her fists through the air was wonderful to hear, and the impacts against the now glacially slow undead caused her to scream in joy. The seven were tossed aside, inhuman strength flinging them like dolls into the air.
Hah! Easy! Was this what being an Expert felt like?
"Come on you beasts! Come and get me!" She commanded and reset her stance with a loud
kiai. One hand high and the other low, she waited with both knees bent to receive their charge.
The Shattered Century obliged.
Like a collapsing storm nine assaulted her at once, the front rank's spears transforming into blades slashing for her metal flesh. With a shrill battlecry she leapt forward, the stone cracking beneath her foot and leapt upon them. The first two specters were tossed to either side, bodies shattering, the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth all falling before her scything fists and feet. She was deep in the midst of the formation now, elbow to elbow with monsters and she
loved it. Her Qi, gathered into a knot in her heart, pulsed and exploded in a great corona around her.
Weirding Mountain Art: Tower of Curses Form
With every step she laughed, her fanged maw and burning Eye reflected in the light of their phantom weapons. The corona of her power blossomed into cloak of howling blades of Wind that flensed the flesh from their hardened bones. Cerina smashed into the press of bodies with bone crushing fist and flesh parting fingers, her senses and speed honed to the knife's edge and her Curse rendering their flesh feeble and
weak. She reached out and like scooping sand from a dune, they came apart, their clotted dead blood collecting in a river at her feet.
She rode that river, a many limbed deva of destruction, killing what must have been close to thirty of the specters, streamers of spectral flame rising from the bodies to empower the remainder. The killing slowed and then suddenly ceased, no more spectres in reach. To some unheard signal, they all retreated suddenly. Beyond the reach of the monster in their midst and hiding amidst the cratered and rubble strew landscape of their arena. She heard wood under tension, strings stretching and gathered her might in a swirling mass at her core.
Forty bows were shot at her and the world slowed as her perception accelerated. Every single arrow was perfectly placed to spear her in joint or neck or soft organs. A spiral of Wind answered her roar, picking them up and dashing half to the earth. The other half she plucked out of the air with her hands and flung back at their shooters. Five found their mark and stabbed through the skull or eye or chest of their shooters.
The rest riddled their comrades, though none fell. With their reduced numbers, she saw through the gaps that a handful of the spectres were holding some of those she had not managed to slay, running their hands over their wounds and healing them with Heavenly power. "No. None of that!" She hissed.
Sweeping her hands palm down before her she gathered Wind into swirling vortexes around her fingers and tossed them out. Blasts of wind carved through brick and wood and flesh and bone, neatly plucking heads from bodies. All of the healers died in an eyeblink and slumped to the ground, fallen bodies releasing streams of spectral Qi. The remaining spectres numbered around fifty.
The next pair leapt upon her with the strength of the 10th Heavenstage, and yet she threw them back into the ruins with speed like cannonballs. They could not stand against the might of a cultivator in the 13th Heavenstage driven by rage and her Dao roaring in her heart. Knowing this, the Shattered Century attempted to trap her.
At the same time the pair flew away, three more sprinted out of the shadows of the ruins behind her and exploded - releasing great ropes of ghostly intestines that lashed out and attempted to trap her and pull her to the ground.
The sound of their footsteps and the Foresighted Eye warned her, but she could not cleanly avoid all of them. Her right arm was caught, the other two shredded by the winds howling around her. The weight of the spectre on her arm grew immense, its limbs beating at her head. But they could not hold her down. With her strength surging, Cerina roared and wrapped her hand around the spectre's exposed spine. She turned its body into a weapon against its fellows.
Like an angry giant she pulped half a dozen spectres in the next three heartbeats. And yet, the Shattered Century was succeeding in pushing her back, heming her in and in the next three steps her back was pressed up against a crumbling gray wall. Now trapped, vulnerable for a split second, the spectres unleashed their next move.
She saw the shadow of the explosion coming through the future, the acceleration of her mind and the support of her Dao allowing her a brief window of opportunity. She raised the corpse in front of her, calling the Wind into a cushion around her body. The shockwave slapped her through the wall, brick crumbling against her back, light blinding her. Gray flames ate at the improvised shield in front of her, clinging to her Wind like burning goo.
She tossed it all aside as she flew, skull ringing, and then seven spears flew at her back - once more using her blindspot. But her ears were not deceived, their whistling giving the spears away, and she spun in the air to try and lurch away from death. She dodged four, the shafts punching through her fanned out hair and ripping a hole through her robes. The remaining three tore a gauge out of her left elbow, scraped along her side, and almost tore open the artery in her left shoulder.
Then she hit the ground and bounced. Once, twice, shards of stone raining down around her as she came to a stop. The pain and blurry vision just made her grit her teeth harder. She didn't remember standing, blood leaking from her lips. She spat to the side and shouted her rage at the skies. "You think you can kill me Heaven!? When the Dao is with me and I stand as the last scion of my House?"
She would
not die here. Snarling, blood in her teeth, Cerina twisted her hands and gathered the Wind at her back. Three miniature cyclones gathered air behind her, shining in an arc above her head. Two pointed at the mass of spectres charging her from the front, while the last pointed at the smaller group flanking her from behind.
Weirding Mountain Art: Threefold Northern Gust
Three columns of wind and yellow light erupted, spearing across the battlefield and cleaving through the ranks of the ghosts. Twenty were torn apart, their upper bodies pierced through and then blasted open. Three enormous holes were punched through the rubble, the one behind her carving a neat hole through a still intact shop front and causing it to collapse.
The remaining spectres dispersed, disappearing amongst the ruins of the neighborhood around her.
The corpses of the fallen released more of their power. It would not matter. She gathered her own power and moved through the mist back towards the reward altar, hoping for them to show their ugly faces.
All was silent, however, until she reached the altar and climbed on top of it to survey the area. With a great clamor to her left, a wail from dead throats, twenty emerged out of a slumping barracks building, wielding great shields and long pikes. For a moment there was a standoff, the spectres radiating with the Qi of the 12th Heavenstage.
She reached up and out, pulling at the air with her will and her magics. A great sphere of spinning wind gathered above her head, at least a hundred feet wide. The spectres gathered up their weapons and charged. With every boom of her heart the sphere contracted, forced smaller and smaller between her hands until it became a glowing yellow pinprick in the palm of her hand. Her left hand fell and she wrapped her right hand around it, the yellow light shining between her fingers.
She brought her right hand before her face and it pulsed once more, a critical threshold reached. Cerina opened her fingers and blew.
Weirding Mountain Art: Blossom of Hope
The tiny sphere violently released its stored power and wind, a huge cone of devastation and yellow light erupting from it. Accelerated by the power of the Shattered Gravestone Herb and an immense amount of Qi, Cerina's attack vaporized the front rank of the Shattered Century. Then the second. Then the third were cast to the earth, their flesh shredded and their bones broken, tossed about like toys.
Cerina was left heaving for breath, the buzzing of the Gravestone Herb leaving her mind and her Qi ebbing low once more. The steaming corpses of her enemies twitched, the final survivors barely clinging onto unnatural life. Lowering her hand, she remained upon the reward altar and bathed them all in the vile radiance of her Withering Eye.
Their end came as ash on the wind, their very beings pulled apart by the Curse. She breathed a deep sigh of weariness.
But finally,
finally, the last spectre lay defeated at her feet. She stood atop the quiescent reward altar, one foot extended while her back leg was bent, her hands raised in a low guard. Nothing on this ruined plain wailed, nothing moved, the only sound was her haggard breathing and the blood that dripped from her ragged flesh.
The Shattered Century lay silent once more. She took a deep breath and settled her heart, slowing the loss of blood with her Qi. A quiet serenity stole over her mind, even though energy still burned within their bodies. She watched with pained calm as the ring of gray fire overhead swirled and then a bolt of fire snapped down upon the most intact body.
The cloaked form's clothing writhed in the wind and the other corpses broke down into flame. They were sucked into this central body, every fallen civilian pulled into a whirlpool of fire. When the last was consumed, the fire winked out all at once and left nothing behind but pitch darkness. Distantly, she heard thunder boom and smelled rain. Ignoring that she called on her dregs of Qi for a small light - revealing empty dim gray stone. The Shattered Century was gone. She descended from the altar.
A distant portal opened, revealing a green hilltop and dark stones.
Out of Spirit Stones, with her rewards burning in her head and hand, she was ready to go. But an intuition held her back. Was she paranoid? No, she recognized the feeling in her gut. The sensation of another person, somewhere near. Turning slowly she peered into the cracks of time, slowing time around the altar. And there, seated upon the altar with its hands clasped, was a cloaked figure, its flesh twisted by chunks of brick and wood.
A Shattered Servant, a foreign thought identified it. Its face bore many eyes and sharp teeth, a distorted amalgam creature. "Come here," she ordered. It rose and approached, standing as tall as she did. There was only a tiny flicker of awareness in its blackish eyes. A faint sense of attentiveness brushed against her mind.
The remains in her P.A.C.K called to her. Struck by an idea she ripped them out hurriedly and unwrapped them. She held them out to the Servant and gave a fateful order. "Make them yours." She had no idea if this would work.
The Servant paused, gathering itself, and then stretched out its mangled hands over Merrcio's hands. Its gray flesh rippled and split around the human limbs, its pale bones revealed. They flowed into his limbs, finger to finger and palm to palm, like the Servant was shadows and mist. When the work ended, it pulled away its arms, his hands attached to its wrists. Still protected by shards of brick and wood, but the flesh was no longer so corpse-like. And a new attention filled is eyes.
"Free…" it croaked. She nodded. "I promise." A weak presence pressed a request against her mind, and she let it fade away. It rested now, waiting in the gaps between moments to attend to her. No more did she walk alone.
She relaxed, finally and began to walk towards the distant. She would have to take a long time to even have a chance of getting back at Heaven. She'd push and push and push until an opportunity appeared. For now, her Path was clear.
She was still annoyed when she emerged from the standing stones of the trial to find a rumbling stormfront making its way towards her. That feeling darkened when she saw a flicker of five colored lightning within the anvil clouds. She could taste static on her tongue and pins and needles tingled at the tips of her fingers and toes.
"No." She grumbled at the Heavens. It would be so easy to make the final step but she
refused. Her philosophy would not allow it, not before she had taught others and refined her insight would she be ready. Doing it early like this was cheating!
The thunder boomed again. She could feel the energy building within her body, and so she reached in and vented some of her limited Qi. If she let it flow as it wished, the Heavenly retribution would begin and she knew she would be annihilated. A random hill in Yuan after such an arduous trial was not the right place or time. With her Qi firmly in hand she breathed and leashed it back to her will.
"Not today," the girl told the thunder. She coughed, static buzzing on her tongue.
It was going to be a very long walk home.
***
Merrcio understood now. That girl had somehow damaged this trial, her Dao unexplainably reaching out as she advanced and carving an exception in him in her wake. What fun! What joy and bitterness that stoked in him. She would go on, and he was left here half-aware. Trapped and praying she would remember him, with no hands to haul himself out.
He slid down and down and down and down, a person compressed between titanic forces of the Heavenly singularity. He wanted to see the world. He wanted to hear the stories her people had to tell. He wanted to live in a true world, to taste true food and become
real. He should not simply be gone. He had done nothing to deserve eternal slumber.
His thoughts slowed. There were only so many thoughts to have trapped in a prison of eons until his trial was needed again. Resistance, hope, peace. She had helped him in the false world, she had opened his eyes to its flaws and for that enlightenment he was grateful. Inexorably stillness swallowed his mind as his soul was returned to the fold of the great mechanism of this trial.
Yet, he knew now that he had changed. A vulnerability in a greater system. This is what he was. And in time he would be Free, as they all ought to be.
And here I reveal that I want to make Cerina into a
zealot. So filled with hope for a better universe, even in the face of the impossible. For now, the work is complete and I am satisfied.
I'm so happy I can move on to Cerina and her Students, which I have been excited over for like a year at this point.
Also, 'bout a month ago I realized that the timespan of this quest probably does quite well with an episodic format similar to Conan, so I'm going to try that out with Cerina once I get through introducing her students and showing off her Tribulation.
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