Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)
- Thread starter yrsillar
- Start date
- Original Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
When LQ checked what the Moons where about in the libary last year it was "Boon to travelers and sailors; divinatory techniques; revealing mystery" and the potential Moon quest we had was about learning formations with Xuan Shi.
- Location
- The Star Kingdom of Manticore
Wait.... was the guiding moon trying to play match maker?
The Guiding Moon is the Full Moon. It lights up the night and provides direction to travelers. We get an idea of what that means from that.
If we look at her from the perspective of Ling Qi she's related to the concept of guiding people to where they need to be, in location but also more metaphorical places. If Grinning and Dreaming are about being one's self then Guiding is about personal growth and becoming your best self. It's about helping people find things, find their way, find ways and find their Way. All that you could ask guidance for the Guiding Moon gives boons towards.
If there's a Moon that plays matchmaker then it'd probably be the Guiding Moon.
- Location
- Ukraine
- Pronouns
- She/They
So what I'm hearing is Ling Qi has strong inroads with all moons except Bloody.
- Location
- Ukraine
- Pronouns
- She/They
Well, Ling Qi's also notably not into revenge or grudges, as a person.
What I'm pointing it at is that save for Bloody, Ling Qi's got stuff from ALL the other moons. She's a diplomat, a musician, a surrogate mother, a scout (guiding!), a scholar and a thief all in one.
What I'm pointing it at is that save for Bloody, Ling Qi's got stuff from ALL the other moons. She's a diplomat, a musician, a surrogate mother, a scout (guiding!), a scholar and a thief all in one.
- Location
- Finland
I don't think Ling Qi has much cause to seek revenge at the moment, because she already has.
But i would not call Ling Qi as someone who is live and let live or forgiving type of person.
She does not obsess over it, but she has found revenge useful in the past, but once revenge (or justice) has been had, then it's done.
But i would not call Ling Qi as someone who is live and let live or forgiving type of person.
She does not obsess over it, but she has found revenge useful in the past, but once revenge (or justice) has been had, then it's done.
She both is and isn't. She pretty notably doesn't act on grudges but Yrs has offered us several counterattack/retribution Arts that always almost got vote in so I think at least the GM thinks there's a part of Ling Qi that suits the revenge theme. Which would make sense, Ling Qi's main ambition is to find safety for herself and those she loves and the threat of retribution is how all the powerful clans survive. While Ling Qi was pretty lethargic with her reprisal against Yan Renshu she did eventually attack him when it became clear he wouldn't leave her alone. She isn't the type to pursue revenge at great cost like the Bai and Sun, but she's pretty capable of retribution.
And while she has struggled with killing and hurting people, has said she doesn't like fighting because of the fear and risk that entails, she can be a bit bloodthirsty at times and feel great satisfaction from defeating her opponents.
- Location
- United Kingdom
The Guiding Moon does have an investment in shipping.
- Location
- UK
Well gotta remember she is also very Mercy For All, as seen in the interlude. I imagine she would disapprove but not personally do much herself other than look disappointed. Even with all the horrors and cruelties the ancient gods were getting up to, she didn't attack them herself, she begged them to stop them woke up the Nameless. I doubt much in modern times could push her to repeat such methods.
I wouldn't be surprised if the other Moon Aspects looked poorly on you desecrating their kindest of sisters things though.
Makes me wonder what a Mother/Bloody moon cultivator would look like.
I think its more like...a cloak of thorns to keep threats away, but once they are gone, it is done with and left behind to the wind. She believes pain, suffering and sorrow are what makes enemies stop hurting you, but there's no sense inflicting it on them beyond their stopping
- Location
- Ukraine
- Pronouns
- She/They
There is a line between immediate self-defense and long-term strategic defense through demonstrative grudge keeping. Ling Qi does the first, but she's far too airheaded for the second, and she has shown to be uncomfortable with that sort of thing, not just neutral.
Turn 11: Arc 3-6
"We can do this," Ling Qi said quietly, watching the creatures back. "Do you think it will react if we prepare ourselves?"
"It may," Xia Lin replied, cracking her neck. "We strike the moment it shows awareness?"
Ling Qi hummed in agreement. "My most potent damaging art requires physical contact, can I trust you to pin its movements when signaled?"
"You can," Xia Lin thoughtfully, traceries of light began to fill the engraved grooves in the head of her weapon again.. "My most potent damaging arts require me to shed my own defenses. Can I trust your arts?"
"You can," Ling Qi said, summoning her flute with a flick of her wrist. Lake qi, dark and still began to ripple out. "Zhengui, I want you to bring up your lava when we strike, after that, focus on supporting us, okay?"
"Yes!" Zhengui agreed in two voices, his shell began to glow, and beneath their feet, Ling Qi sensed the movement of roots.
The wind began to kick up around her, playfully tugging at her hair and gown, wafting away the stagnant air, and Ling Qi began to play the Spring's End Aria, Sixiang hummed along, weaving their qi through Ling Qi's to empower the art, ensuring that it would not end mid battle.
"Duet time!" Hanyi said excitedly, hopping down beside her. She was already beginning to hum the Aria, shrouding herself in glittering snowflakes.
Beside them, white radiance flared through the eye slits of Xia Lin's mask, and the joints of her armor. The girl's outline sharpened as if her very silhouette was a blade's edge, and Ling Qi felt the wind hiss, parting around her as Xia Lin lowered herself into a crouch, halberd pointed forward.
Pebbles around their feet began to rattle under the gathering power, and soft gray ash began to fill the air. Two weapons, one an intricate singing blade, and the other a utilitarian thing of straight lines and humming gears formed over their shoulders, spilling mist and radiance into the air.
In the fly shrouded chamber, a rasping breath hitched.
Stone shattered in a deep circle where Xia Lin had stood as she launched forward in a streak of unforgiving light. The soft sound of Ling Qi's flute rose to a crescendo over the rumbling of the earth. Magma erupted beneath the corpse-immortal, and twin voices raised in song lashed it with the icy cold, blackening rotting flesh even as fat and flesh boiled away and flies and maggots burned.
Xia Lin struck the creatures back with a tremendous boom, sending magma splashing outward as stone shattered into dust and pebbles.
There was a rumble, and a tremendous roar shook the chamber as a tide of black liquid, looking like stylizied waves swept out of the chamber, carrying Xia Lin with it. Ling Qi's eyes widened as she seized Hanyi's hand and flew straight up over the wave of ink. Below Zhengui braced himself with a wedge of roots parting it before it could sweep him away.
In the doorway of the now ruined chamber, she saw the Corpse. It stood hunched, almost apelike in posture, it's glittering green robe falling open to reveal ribs wrapped in paper thin flesh. Oozing black taint flowed through a rupture in its sternum, connected to the shattered dantian in its chest. It's legs were burned, down to the bone in some places, and as she watched strips of frozen flesh sloughed off. A gaping wound carved down from it's shoulder nearly to its pelvis, leaving a slice of torso and it's right arm hanging oddly. Maggots writhed trying to stitch flesh back together, but blazing radiance crawled along the wound, searing the vermin.
There was a sickling crackling sound as the creature turned its head upward. Revealing dried, sunken face wrapped tightly around a skull, blackened lips long pulled back from teeth the color of mud. One eye socket was empty, teeming with tiny spiders, and the other held a blank white orb. As she watched, it rolled in its socket, revealing a sickly yellow iris and glowing pupil that focused on her.
"Caaiiiiiiii…." hissed the corpse, in a voice that echoed as if from the bottom of a well.
A thread of Liming outshone the arms of the White Plume, Ling Qi thought faintly.
Xia Lin returned in a clap of thunder, midnight blue ink dripping from her gleaming armor, and the corpse bent backward as the halberd clove through the space where it's neck had been, the brush in the corpses hand flicked, and ink flowed, three soldiers clad in black and green flowed, living drawings whos spears locked with Xia Lin's forced her to rebound, her blade trailing boiling ink. At the same time the buzzing swarm wreathing the corpse grew loud, rising into a terrible crescendo, a whirling vortex of buzzing wings and chitinous bodies.
But Ling Qi was experienced with vermin by now. Thousands died, frozen in the air, and thousands more fell choked on ash. Ling Qi's mist churned into dozens of dark feathered birds, as she shifted melodies into the Primal War Calling, and the Mist girded their talons and beaks in winter's rime.
"Upstart and thief," the corpse hissed, it's one burning eye never left her, even as Xia Lin clashed with it's ink soldiers barely a half dozen meters away. The whirl of blades tore gauges in stone with their passage, and left stinking clouds of boiling ink where drawing met reality. There were six of them now, new soldiers sprouting up where ink pooled on the ground.
Silently, Sixiang sent her signal. Ink soldiers stiffened as roots grasped their feet, drawing their dance to a brief close as Xia Lin lit up like a comet and punched through their line, her whirling polearm forcing the corpse to hiss like a steaming kettle as it was driven back by blade and haft splitting the air in a continuous stream of thunderclaps that tore free chunks of rotting flesh.
With Ling Qi still clinging to hanyi's hand, they moved, dissolving into wind and falling flakes before materializing just behind the creature. She played, Hanyi sang, and both of them reached out seize a scrap of trailing robe.
Together, they sang and sound died for only a moment. The air, heated by Zhengui's magma, exploded into steam.
Hanyi cried out in pain as a rotting foot struck her in the chest, and rocketed back, striking the corpse of the giant spider with a resounding crack to punch through it's hollow chitin, and Ling Qi choked as a skeletal claw seized her around the throat. For just a second, Ling Qi stared directly into the thing's hideous face, trapped by the echo of higher realm power that remained in it's bones. Flies bit and stung at her face, and fetid claws left pinprick wounds on her neck..
"You… slave, dare wield art against me?" the corpse-immortal hissed. Entire sections of flesh had frozen and shattered under the power of her and Hanyi's song, leaving the corpse near skeletal, but still it stood. Her screaming phantasmal birds tore at its frosted bones, but it seemed not to care. She saw it's gaze flick down then, and the creature paused in confusion, staring at its own hand.
Xia Lin's halberd slammed down upon its back, and Ling Qi whirled away on the wind, reappearing meters back, grimacing Zhengui bellowed, his full mass ramming into the expanding crowd of ink soldiers seeking Xia Lin's back, a wall of roots and branches erupting to cut off their path.
The corpse ducked, twisted, and dodged through the whirling storm of Xia Lin's assault, shying hissing away from the trailing lines of burning light left in the blades wake building a cage of radiance, with every step Xia Lin grew faster, her limbs becoming a blur even to Ling Qi's eyes. All the while the corpse muttered to itself. "No, no, not right, not right," words tumbling over one another into an unintelligible gibbering.
Narrowing her eyes, Ling Qi flew to follow the trail of their fight, and positioning herself just right, played a harsh note that pulsed with the power of an avalanche. The corpse screamed in rage as the icy qi struck it's back, making it stumble forward, open to Xia Lin's skull cleaving blow.
Ling Qi felt Sixiang let out a hiss of discomfort as something in the liminal realm jerked violently. Where Xia Lin's halberd came down, a rainbow of color erupted, washing away her light. Ling Qi saw the halberd's blade strike the palm of an outstretched hand, lightly tanned and manicured to perfection.
Smoke, ash, mist and light blew away, and there stood a man. He was tall and proud in features, his loose open robe displaying a musculature of perfect fitness, like a monument to male beauty. His flowing black hair wafted upward on an invisible breeze, crowning his haughty features with a midnight halo. His free hand lashed out in an open palm strike, black qi rippled out around Xia Lin, a featureless mirror to absorb all blows.
The man's hand punched through it like paper, and Ling Qi heard metal squeal as Xia Lin's breastplate dented inward and she flew backward.
"Toy soldiers and philistines, this is what she sends to slay Hui Peng?" the man sneered.
For a second, Ling Qi felt a thrill of fear, but Sixiang tugged at her attention. The face was a shell of dream, an echo long imprinted on the liminal space within the room. Beneath there was still only rot. She felt Xia Lin getting back up, and she felt Hanyi limping back around, hidden in the shadows. Zhengui was shrouded in burning ink, tearing apart the last of the soldiers.
If she could get his attention again…
"Not sure what you're so proud of," Ling Qi taunted. "Maybe if you didn't sit around in your own waste you'd have some worthwhile works to your name.."
"Hmph, a slave of Cai and her dull art has no right to lecture a Hui on beauty," the man sniffed. "Your performance and presentation are dull. Do you think I did not hear the mortal mud staining your childish melodies? Like your master, you are mired in the petty mortal nonsense of this world. True art arises from those who are above such concerns."
Ling Qi cocked her head, thinking fast on her words as the others recovered. "Sounds vapid and empty to me, but I suppose that is all I should expect from a clan who lost to one woman's vision."
The man's handsome face distorted, lips peeling back to show rotten teeth once more as he let out a hiss. "Then let me show you slave, the transcendent truth."
Ling Qi felt her stomach drop as the inkbrush in his hand blurred, tracing an intricate pattern in the air, and behind her an eagle screamed. Ling Qi dissolved into wind, but still felt a prick of pain as talons passed through her. In the distance, a wolf howled as she tumbled downward, and Ling Qi hit the ground in a roll, rising back into the air as the fangs of wolves tore at her dress.
A bear's paw the size of a house slammed down on her, and smashed her back to earth. Ling Qi tasted blood in her mouth as stone turned to powder under the impact, burying her in grit. And gentle birdsong began to waft through the air, drawing her qi out through her meridians.
She felt the barrier between dream and reality bending around the man, as his brush whipped back and forth through the air, rainbow light blazing around him.Birds took flight, wolves prowled about his feet and soldiers took shape from the ink bleeding through the air..
As Ling Qi took to the air once more, air distorting as Sixiang began to push the veil, Zhengui barreled into the fray. Expanded to his full size, ink soldiers clinging to his shell and legs, his bulk slammed into the corpse-immortal like a collapsing hill.
He stopped dead, the corpse man holding him back with a single hand pressed to his snout. "Fool Be-"
Lava erupted, drowning him in liquid rock, and the corpse screamed in rage as his soldiers turned their blades upon Zhengui, inky weapons carving into scaly flesh.
Most importantly, he was open, the deranged creature had forgotten Xia Lin already. She met the girl's eyes from across the cavern, where even now she wiped a bloodied hand across her blade, causing qi to flare in a most familiar way.
She didn't even have to lie for her taunt. Echoing through the dream, she could feel nothing but self aggrandizement in this corpse's art. He painted a world where he was master, not for any reason, but simply because it was his birthright.
"Ugly, the ugliest I've ever seen! You call that truth?" she mocked even as the glittering cloud of songbirds around him turned themselves upon her, and she felt her qi weaken precipitously. The eagle was coming back around, a new scream building in its throat, and the titanic bear he had summoned was rising on its hind legs to reach her.
The corpse of Hui Peng leapt into the air, dripping magma and ash, an enraged snarl on his face as something terrible bloomed from his brush.
The spike of a halberd, burning with colorless radiance that scorned all defense, punched through his sternum, and the rest of the blade followed. The blade pulsed, and flesh and gore disintegrated. The illusion shattered and there was only a tattered corpse remaining. Two thirds of its chest reduced to ash.
Like soap bubbles, the ink phantoms popped and vanished as frozen bones clattered to the floor in disarray.
"It may," Xia Lin replied, cracking her neck. "We strike the moment it shows awareness?"
Ling Qi hummed in agreement. "My most potent damaging art requires physical contact, can I trust you to pin its movements when signaled?"
"You can," Xia Lin thoughtfully, traceries of light began to fill the engraved grooves in the head of her weapon again.. "My most potent damaging arts require me to shed my own defenses. Can I trust your arts?"
"You can," Ling Qi said, summoning her flute with a flick of her wrist. Lake qi, dark and still began to ripple out. "Zhengui, I want you to bring up your lava when we strike, after that, focus on supporting us, okay?"
"Yes!" Zhengui agreed in two voices, his shell began to glow, and beneath their feet, Ling Qi sensed the movement of roots.
The wind began to kick up around her, playfully tugging at her hair and gown, wafting away the stagnant air, and Ling Qi began to play the Spring's End Aria, Sixiang hummed along, weaving their qi through Ling Qi's to empower the art, ensuring that it would not end mid battle.
"Duet time!" Hanyi said excitedly, hopping down beside her. She was already beginning to hum the Aria, shrouding herself in glittering snowflakes.
Beside them, white radiance flared through the eye slits of Xia Lin's mask, and the joints of her armor. The girl's outline sharpened as if her very silhouette was a blade's edge, and Ling Qi felt the wind hiss, parting around her as Xia Lin lowered herself into a crouch, halberd pointed forward.
Pebbles around their feet began to rattle under the gathering power, and soft gray ash began to fill the air. Two weapons, one an intricate singing blade, and the other a utilitarian thing of straight lines and humming gears formed over their shoulders, spilling mist and radiance into the air.
In the fly shrouded chamber, a rasping breath hitched.
Stone shattered in a deep circle where Xia Lin had stood as she launched forward in a streak of unforgiving light. The soft sound of Ling Qi's flute rose to a crescendo over the rumbling of the earth. Magma erupted beneath the corpse-immortal, and twin voices raised in song lashed it with the icy cold, blackening rotting flesh even as fat and flesh boiled away and flies and maggots burned.
Xia Lin struck the creatures back with a tremendous boom, sending magma splashing outward as stone shattered into dust and pebbles.
There was a rumble, and a tremendous roar shook the chamber as a tide of black liquid, looking like stylizied waves swept out of the chamber, carrying Xia Lin with it. Ling Qi's eyes widened as she seized Hanyi's hand and flew straight up over the wave of ink. Below Zhengui braced himself with a wedge of roots parting it before it could sweep him away.
In the doorway of the now ruined chamber, she saw the Corpse. It stood hunched, almost apelike in posture, it's glittering green robe falling open to reveal ribs wrapped in paper thin flesh. Oozing black taint flowed through a rupture in its sternum, connected to the shattered dantian in its chest. It's legs were burned, down to the bone in some places, and as she watched strips of frozen flesh sloughed off. A gaping wound carved down from it's shoulder nearly to its pelvis, leaving a slice of torso and it's right arm hanging oddly. Maggots writhed trying to stitch flesh back together, but blazing radiance crawled along the wound, searing the vermin.
There was a sickling crackling sound as the creature turned its head upward. Revealing dried, sunken face wrapped tightly around a skull, blackened lips long pulled back from teeth the color of mud. One eye socket was empty, teeming with tiny spiders, and the other held a blank white orb. As she watched, it rolled in its socket, revealing a sickly yellow iris and glowing pupil that focused on her.
"Caaiiiiiiii…." hissed the corpse, in a voice that echoed as if from the bottom of a well.
A thread of Liming outshone the arms of the White Plume, Ling Qi thought faintly.
Xia Lin returned in a clap of thunder, midnight blue ink dripping from her gleaming armor, and the corpse bent backward as the halberd clove through the space where it's neck had been, the brush in the corpses hand flicked, and ink flowed, three soldiers clad in black and green flowed, living drawings whos spears locked with Xia Lin's forced her to rebound, her blade trailing boiling ink. At the same time the buzzing swarm wreathing the corpse grew loud, rising into a terrible crescendo, a whirling vortex of buzzing wings and chitinous bodies.
But Ling Qi was experienced with vermin by now. Thousands died, frozen in the air, and thousands more fell choked on ash. Ling Qi's mist churned into dozens of dark feathered birds, as she shifted melodies into the Primal War Calling, and the Mist girded their talons and beaks in winter's rime.
"Upstart and thief," the corpse hissed, it's one burning eye never left her, even as Xia Lin clashed with it's ink soldiers barely a half dozen meters away. The whirl of blades tore gauges in stone with their passage, and left stinking clouds of boiling ink where drawing met reality. There were six of them now, new soldiers sprouting up where ink pooled on the ground.
Silently, Sixiang sent her signal. Ink soldiers stiffened as roots grasped their feet, drawing their dance to a brief close as Xia Lin lit up like a comet and punched through their line, her whirling polearm forcing the corpse to hiss like a steaming kettle as it was driven back by blade and haft splitting the air in a continuous stream of thunderclaps that tore free chunks of rotting flesh.
With Ling Qi still clinging to hanyi's hand, they moved, dissolving into wind and falling flakes before materializing just behind the creature. She played, Hanyi sang, and both of them reached out seize a scrap of trailing robe.
Together, they sang and sound died for only a moment. The air, heated by Zhengui's magma, exploded into steam.
Hanyi cried out in pain as a rotting foot struck her in the chest, and rocketed back, striking the corpse of the giant spider with a resounding crack to punch through it's hollow chitin, and Ling Qi choked as a skeletal claw seized her around the throat. For just a second, Ling Qi stared directly into the thing's hideous face, trapped by the echo of higher realm power that remained in it's bones. Flies bit and stung at her face, and fetid claws left pinprick wounds on her neck..
"You… slave, dare wield art against me?" the corpse-immortal hissed. Entire sections of flesh had frozen and shattered under the power of her and Hanyi's song, leaving the corpse near skeletal, but still it stood. Her screaming phantasmal birds tore at its frosted bones, but it seemed not to care. She saw it's gaze flick down then, and the creature paused in confusion, staring at its own hand.
Xia Lin's halberd slammed down upon its back, and Ling Qi whirled away on the wind, reappearing meters back, grimacing Zhengui bellowed, his full mass ramming into the expanding crowd of ink soldiers seeking Xia Lin's back, a wall of roots and branches erupting to cut off their path.
The corpse ducked, twisted, and dodged through the whirling storm of Xia Lin's assault, shying hissing away from the trailing lines of burning light left in the blades wake building a cage of radiance, with every step Xia Lin grew faster, her limbs becoming a blur even to Ling Qi's eyes. All the while the corpse muttered to itself. "No, no, not right, not right," words tumbling over one another into an unintelligible gibbering.
Narrowing her eyes, Ling Qi flew to follow the trail of their fight, and positioning herself just right, played a harsh note that pulsed with the power of an avalanche. The corpse screamed in rage as the icy qi struck it's back, making it stumble forward, open to Xia Lin's skull cleaving blow.
Ling Qi felt Sixiang let out a hiss of discomfort as something in the liminal realm jerked violently. Where Xia Lin's halberd came down, a rainbow of color erupted, washing away her light. Ling Qi saw the halberd's blade strike the palm of an outstretched hand, lightly tanned and manicured to perfection.
Smoke, ash, mist and light blew away, and there stood a man. He was tall and proud in features, his loose open robe displaying a musculature of perfect fitness, like a monument to male beauty. His flowing black hair wafted upward on an invisible breeze, crowning his haughty features with a midnight halo. His free hand lashed out in an open palm strike, black qi rippled out around Xia Lin, a featureless mirror to absorb all blows.
The man's hand punched through it like paper, and Ling Qi heard metal squeal as Xia Lin's breastplate dented inward and she flew backward.
"Toy soldiers and philistines, this is what she sends to slay Hui Peng?" the man sneered.
For a second, Ling Qi felt a thrill of fear, but Sixiang tugged at her attention. The face was a shell of dream, an echo long imprinted on the liminal space within the room. Beneath there was still only rot. She felt Xia Lin getting back up, and she felt Hanyi limping back around, hidden in the shadows. Zhengui was shrouded in burning ink, tearing apart the last of the soldiers.
If she could get his attention again…
"Not sure what you're so proud of," Ling Qi taunted. "Maybe if you didn't sit around in your own waste you'd have some worthwhile works to your name.."
"Hmph, a slave of Cai and her dull art has no right to lecture a Hui on beauty," the man sniffed. "Your performance and presentation are dull. Do you think I did not hear the mortal mud staining your childish melodies? Like your master, you are mired in the petty mortal nonsense of this world. True art arises from those who are above such concerns."
Ling Qi cocked her head, thinking fast on her words as the others recovered. "Sounds vapid and empty to me, but I suppose that is all I should expect from a clan who lost to one woman's vision."
The man's handsome face distorted, lips peeling back to show rotten teeth once more as he let out a hiss. "Then let me show you slave, the transcendent truth."
Ling Qi felt her stomach drop as the inkbrush in his hand blurred, tracing an intricate pattern in the air, and behind her an eagle screamed. Ling Qi dissolved into wind, but still felt a prick of pain as talons passed through her. In the distance, a wolf howled as she tumbled downward, and Ling Qi hit the ground in a roll, rising back into the air as the fangs of wolves tore at her dress.
A bear's paw the size of a house slammed down on her, and smashed her back to earth. Ling Qi tasted blood in her mouth as stone turned to powder under the impact, burying her in grit. And gentle birdsong began to waft through the air, drawing her qi out through her meridians.
She felt the barrier between dream and reality bending around the man, as his brush whipped back and forth through the air, rainbow light blazing around him.Birds took flight, wolves prowled about his feet and soldiers took shape from the ink bleeding through the air..
As Ling Qi took to the air once more, air distorting as Sixiang began to push the veil, Zhengui barreled into the fray. Expanded to his full size, ink soldiers clinging to his shell and legs, his bulk slammed into the corpse-immortal like a collapsing hill.
He stopped dead, the corpse man holding him back with a single hand pressed to his snout. "Fool Be-"
Lava erupted, drowning him in liquid rock, and the corpse screamed in rage as his soldiers turned their blades upon Zhengui, inky weapons carving into scaly flesh.
Most importantly, he was open, the deranged creature had forgotten Xia Lin already. She met the girl's eyes from across the cavern, where even now she wiped a bloodied hand across her blade, causing qi to flare in a most familiar way.
She didn't even have to lie for her taunt. Echoing through the dream, she could feel nothing but self aggrandizement in this corpse's art. He painted a world where he was master, not for any reason, but simply because it was his birthright.
"Ugly, the ugliest I've ever seen! You call that truth?" she mocked even as the glittering cloud of songbirds around him turned themselves upon her, and she felt her qi weaken precipitously. The eagle was coming back around, a new scream building in its throat, and the titanic bear he had summoned was rising on its hind legs to reach her.
The corpse of Hui Peng leapt into the air, dripping magma and ash, an enraged snarl on his face as something terrible bloomed from his brush.
The spike of a halberd, burning with colorless radiance that scorned all defense, punched through his sternum, and the rest of the blade followed. The blade pulsed, and flesh and gore disintegrated. The illusion shattered and there was only a tattered corpse remaining. Two thirds of its chest reduced to ash.
Like soap bubbles, the ink phantoms popped and vanished as frozen bones clattered to the floor in disarray.
Last edited:
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
We're bonding already. This has gone well!
her should be their, chi should be qi.
Tough fight but we pulled out the W. Good job gang!
- Location
- Florida
I see Yrs was more hinting than speaking a hypothetical of facing something just as immune to our music as we were to the spiders' bindings.
BungieONI
Seven gremlins in a trench coat
- Location
- Lickwidget
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Get rekt, son!
I am so excited to see calligraphy/art based cultivation arts! :O
globalwarmth
ruining the weather.
- Location
- Polar ice caps
I really love art battles in this setting.
He was not only a filthy undead but a terrible artist. Burn philistine!
He was not only a filthy undead but a terrible artist. Burn philistine!
So Ling Qi leverages her ability to verbally provoke someone from a mental weak point for maximum effectiveness.
This quest truly is one of the best examples of art in the form of writing that I've seen for quite some time. Esoteric and fascinating methods of battle mixing with emphatic and impactful structure in the text. One day I'll need to take a moment just to like my way through the whole work, because it deserves it.
- Location
- Brazil
Hey, dude was a master of one of our most powerful arts. This was probably great for advancing that.
This is an awesome way to showcase the Art version of BKSD. We already have the Eagle and have seen the Wolf but a CC:ing Bear and Qi Draining Birdsong sounds perfect.