I mean that was the state of things with Gan in forge. And I expect Ling Qi to spend much more time with Jian, due to most of her closer friends being unavailable because of the war, and due to him probably being significant in operations. So LingQi might spend a lot more time with him
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.
- Location
- The Star Kingdom of Manticore
Why would she? I expect the limit of the interactions will be at parties hosted by Cai and maybe Wang's training group. He's not in Cai's inner circle like Gan is. He is an important scion. Just like Meizhen isn't taking offensive missions like we are, so too will Han Jian be limited in missions. Plus I doubt that a fresh inner sect student would be assigned any difficult war tasks. We had six months of inner sect training and a proven track record given our defense of the villages. The sect is not going to trust Han Jian with anything and by the time they are we are going to be taking that much more difficult missions.
In the end if we go on any missions with Han Jian I would be very surprised.
Students take war tasks. They are not assigned. And unlike Meizhen, Han is supposed to be a general, and his entire focus is on leading battles. That's pretty much the role the clan wants for him. So he will, almost certainly, participate heavily in those missions. H will be very surprised if he doesn't
- Location
- The Star Kingdom of Manticore
That might be the role the clan wants for him, in the future. But you don't put a fresh solider in command right away. The sect won't trust him. If he gets any combat missions his missions will be scout and defend, unlike our missions which are likely to be assault. He just isn't strong enough or experienced enough to handle the type of missions we will have.
- Location
- the internet
If you go to the rankings for Social Links on the front page, you'll see that Han Jian and Gan Gaunli are both at rank 2 while Xuan Shi has recently been bumped up to rank 3. I honestly don't know why you think we're closer to or more comfortable around Han Jian than Gan Guanli or Xuan Shi.
Also, considering Han Jian forced himself to reject Xuilian b/c he knew his family would never let them stay together (even though he did have feelings for her, and considered her a childhood friend), the idea of him even engaging in tentative romance with LQ is kinda crazy. I mean, its even more impractical what with Han Jian belonging to a completely different faction in a different province than LQ. Han Jian chose to be practical even though he liked Xulian and he knew she would be hurt by his rejection. LQ is nothing if not practical so I can't see her making a conscious choice date someone outside of ES loyalty, even casually. If she accidentally falls in love with anyone who's not ES, it would be someone like Xuan Shi who she's actually kept in touch with throughout Threads. Those two have actually gotten to know each other more. LQ hasn't talked to Han Jian in basically a year. On top of all that, there's no way LQ would hurt Xulian like that, as someone has already stated. I don't know why you think its more than a very very remote possibility.
- Location
- Staring into the void
Gan will be joining inner at the same time, and will be back to being able to freely join Cai and Ling on all and any operations. Jian will be off doing his own thing with his own group.
I don't think we are very close with Han Jian. But it seems highly possible we will spend a lot of time with him because of the war, and LQ is comfortable with him. If she will become good friends with him, then it might help her with her romance trauma
- Location
- The Star Kingdom of Manticore
I disagree with most of this. You have not shown that Ling Qi is any more likely to spend time with him because of the war. Ling Qi has other male friends, some of whom are combat oriented like Wang, and I question the belief that spending time with Han Jian will help her romance trauma because she has other male friends that have barely changed that trauma.
You keep repeating this line despite the pushback from other questers. You have not expanded on why you think so or countered the arguments raised against it. You've just repeated the same lines. To me this is just wishful thinking that isn't supported.
Ling Qi is pragmatic, I'm not sure I'd go so far as to call her romantic, at least not yet. Right now she has a very negative opinion of sex, but she recognizes the need to produce an heir and secure her family line. Producing a legal heir requires the acquisition of a spouse, which opens up the possibility of an alliance with a stronger, more established family, and in that sense she is considering her options. Having accepted marriage as something she'll need to eventually do, she has her eye out for a good partner with whom she can get along with well. She doesn't want a marriage that's a living hell. She isn't anywhere near ready to consider romance outside of the context of marriage.
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The Zheng are the second most influential clan in the entire Empire. Only the Mu are more influential than they.
I'd put the hierarchy at Mu>Zheng>(Alabaster Sands ducals)/Xuan>(Golden Fields ducals)>Bai>Cai>Sun, with the Bai being so low being a historical anomaly (they are normally at a similar level to the Zheng).
Oops, yep. I confused them with that small clan in the Emerald Seas Ling Qi learned about during the Wang hunt. My bad. Of course that puts the Zheng on the opposite end of the political power spectrum. Instead of being a tiny clan stuck on the margins by their insularity, the Zheng are so powerful they can get away with being extremely insular. In fact their insularity makes them less of a threat to the Mu and that in turn reduces the liklihood that the Mu will do to them what was done to the Bai. So unlike Ling Qi, the Zheng can climb no higher than they already have, and the opinions of other power players outside that of the Mu empress herself matter little to them. Ling Qi can not afford to be similarly contemptuous of the views held by the other noble clans.
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- Location
- Florida
The Zheng aren't really holding contemptible view's on other polities as far as I'm aware, beside's marriage and sect's of course, they do hold hospitality to a nigh-religious standard after all. In fact they seem to be immensely curious what the Cai will do in the near future and want to have talk's with the Gu family head.
The Grannie's are stirring, I'm of the opinion that they are preparing for an upcoming civil war with the Empire, but as to what other agenda they have only time will tell especially with our upcoming diplomatic talk's with the ice people.
The Grannie's are stirring, I'm of the opinion that they are preparing for an upcoming civil war with the Empire, but as to what other agenda they have only time will tell especially with our upcoming diplomatic talk's with the ice people.
They aren't terribly insular? After the Mu they are the clan most likely to meddle with other provinces (not including the Sun/Bai and Jin(?)/Xuan rivalries). Other clans would prefer it if they kept to themselves more but they insist on being pests.
I agree that your reasoning you posted above is how LQ currently sees the matter. However, given the Taoist nature of cultivation, I would be extremely cautious about assuming that she is correct in doing so. Looking at insights
"Though a path might be hard and lonely, it has worth if you can present something of beauty to those you care for at the end."
"Even walking alone, footfalls echo beyond your hearing."
"Branches and trunks bend and sway, but the roots must remain unyielding. Retreat only so far and then no more."
"Sincerity is the measure by which the worthiness of the self and ones guests should be measured."
The fact that ideas of companionship and family are so important to her nascent Way means that simply accepting what society says about this is a terrible idea. She needs to figure out something that truly speaks to her, not merely something that she figures she can tolerate.
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- Location
- somewhere over there.
- Pronouns
- They/It
I don't know what it is about the insights, but reading them right after the discussion about the Zheng has me thinking she'd get along oddly well with them? She's like their goth mirror image.
- Location
- All around you.
- Pronouns
- Lord/Master/God
Edited Chapter:
"What is to be our plan of action?" Cai Renxiang asked.
It had been several hours, and now it was nearly morning. With Meng Dan, Ling Qi had exhaustively gone over their surroundings again and again, and the results lay on the table before them, a highly detailed topographical map, with only a few blanks where their combined senses had failed to penetrate.
"I believe the best route is this one," Ling Qi said, tracing her finger along the more weathered mountains on the east side of the gorge. "There is a narrow path here, letting us avoid directly traversing the glacier, and low enough to avoid the worst of the winds."
"Although it is broken, the gaps should be little obstacle to travelers of our caliber, given the climbing gear we have been provided," Meng Dan said confidently.
"It would be unwise to let our feet leave the ground too often, given the fury of the wind spirits outside," Xia Lin agreed, examining the map. "You have already worked the delay into our schedule?"
"I have," Ling Qi said, dipping her head. "But the path is not wholly safe, there are three spirits in this gorge, and there is no way to bypass them all."
"You are more confident in negotiating with the one which presides over the lower mountainside then?" Gan Guangli asked, looming over the table. "Why so?"
Ling Qi was silent for a moment. Within her dantian, she felt Hanyi's mixed emotions, so closely mirroring her own. "The spirit of the snow seems to be most human-like. I'm not sure I could even get the glaciers attention, and the spirit of the winds seems less likely to stick to any deals, even if it might be easy to distract. I feel that the snow spirit is the one I may be able to successfully negotiate with."
She wasn't fool enough to think that potential similarity to her mentor would make it easy, not when she knew, in her bones, what had lain beneath Zeqing's 'civilized' facade. It was a human trait certainly, that endless desire, but that did not make it any less deadly.
"I will trust that your judgement of the matter is sound." Cai Renxiang said simply, cutting through her thoughts. "Gan Guangli, you will join me in warding our party from harm during the climb. Xia Lin, you will take point just ahead of Ling Qi and watch for other dangers while Ling Qi focuses her attention on the spirit. Meng Dan, simply remain close and observe as well as you can."
They all nodded as the heiress spoke, none of them had any objections. Shortly, they began to break down the camp, digging the pavilion free and packing up. The storm had lightened briefly, so it would be good to get started now.
Ling Qi just hoped that her judgement was sound.
The trip was slow going. The others were wrapped in heavy cloaks and coats lined with the warm fur of fire aspected beasts to ward against the extreme chill and the cutting wind without constantly expending qi. The path was a narrow thing, barely more than a meter wide at its greatest extent, only the constant shrieking wind keeping the snow from piling it to impassibility.
They made progress though, slowly creeping along the mountains, avoiding traipsing across the treacherous glacier below. They had to pause often when the wind picked up, even Ling Qi needing to hold tight to the high quality climbing cord strung between them while Gan sank his feet into the mountain stone and anchored them.
It had been so long since Ling Qi had thought to worry about the wind and cold, but out here, the very air was suffused with dense and potent qi bringing back the bite of the wind. Although she needed no coat for the cold, she transformed her mantle into a thick scarf and head wrapping to contain her hair and shield her eyes. She was wary of even trying to exercise any command of the wind here if she didn't have too.
She almost felt as if she had crossed back over into Dream as they progressed and the storm picked up. The dense white snowfall erased everything beyond arms reach, with only the radiant glow of Xia Lin's halberd ahead and Cai Renxiang's glow behind.
All the while she hummed under her breath, not the Frozen Soul Serenade, but one of the idle melodies she had heard her mentor singing in moments of idleness, letting her qi flow freely into the snow all around.
Even so, the hike was exhausting, the cold laid heavily upon them and as they progressed further, the snow only fell more heavily. Wet and clinging, even Ling Qi had to pause and shake it from her shoulders now and then. It wasn't only physical weight, but a mental one, making it a struggle to not just sit down and close her eyes. But they persevered, and Ling Qi felt warm qi spreading in her chest, even as the hems and folds of her gown lit with colorless light, bolstering her against the wind and the unnatural exhaustion.
She saved her qi for her song, broadcasting supplication, friendliness, the desire to speak. She began to notice now and then a shadow in the corner of her vision. A tall figure appearing between snowflakes. Once crouched on a ledge above, again in the sky off to their left, and last standing upon the ledge in front of them, just before the stone had collapsed under Xia Lin's feet, nearly carrying the girl down the mountainside along with several tons of ice and snow, unnatural weight hampering the usually nimble girl's reflexes.
As they regrouped in the aftermath of that, Ling Qi gritted her teeth behind her scarf as she gazed up into the white out sky. Just passively calling out for the spirit to contact them wasn't working.
"She's hungry and curious, I don't think many things come through here," Hanyi whispered in her thoughts.
"Everyone, we should stop for now," Ling Qi called, her mastery of music carrying her words even over the screaming wind. "I'm going to need to actually call the spirit if I want to talk to her."
Cai Renxiang, her face all but hidden in the fur lining of her coat's hood, made a single sharp gesture, indicating that she should proceed. Xia Lin and Gan Guangli gathered beside her watching the snowfall warily, and Meng Dan stood just behind, huddled in his thick coat.
Ling Qi pursed her lips as she turned back to the storm. The cloying feeling in the air was only growing worse, they couldn't just keep pressing through without the spirit's permission. That didn't mean the decision to outright call the spirits attention weighed any less heavily.
She raised her voice regardless, letting power flow through her meridians as she sang into the storm. Focusing on the flows of qi that rippled through the falling sheets of snow, she could see further into the nature of the spirit. In many ways it was simpler than Zeqing, not less powerful, but simply less complex. This spirit would not, she thought, really have the capacity to question her own nature.
But, that nature was fundamentally the same, emptiness, desire for heat and warmth and companionship. If they really had gone on, deeper into its power, they would have each found themselves drawn off, lost one by one to the freezing snow. But the spirit had noticed her. She could be certain of that.
So there was an edge of demand in her song, a tugging on the bond of kinship, however tenuous, resonating with the vibrations of the iron sliver she had palmed, which now grew so cold in her palm that it seemed to wrap around to heat.
The wind picked up, and the veil of snow thickened. Beneath the shriek of the storm, Ling Qi could feel the notes of a song. She saw the figure, standing out in the snowy sky.
Her robe was black and unadorned, it's hems drifting away in ragged threads that merged with the snowy shadows. The spirit's shoulders were hunched, empty sleeves hanging down in front of her body. Her hair billowed across the sky, and there was no point where Ling Qi could say for certain that the snow ended and the crystalline strands began. That same hair, wild and untamed blew ceaselessly, cloaking the spirit's visage, save for a single glimpse of a cold black pit in the shape of an eye with a single white spark of light at its core.
Ling Qi couldn't feel the stone under her feet anymore, it felt as if she were standing in the air.
"We're still where we started, no crossover yet, but things are a little thin," Sixiang whispered nervously.
"It feels like home," Hanyi muttered.
"Of course, Hanyi never left," Zhengui grumbled.
Ling Qi brought her hands together, and very carefully bowed, letting the song flowing from lips ring with supplication and the desire to speak.
'Lost one trespasses.' the spirit didn't really speak, so much as meaning impressed itself directly into her thoughts carried on the ethereal melody underlying the storm. 'Such riches you have. Joining?'
Ling Qi grimaced at the coldly envious song, so full of dark yearning to embrace and consume. "I cannot," she replied carefully. "I belong to another. We only want to pass through. Can we arrange passage?" Jealous, possessive, the spirit was, but it recognized kinship, there was some thread of humanity to it, she could read it in the spirit's qi, threads going south.
There was a rumble, like the start of an avalanche as the spirit's head twitched to the side, at an angle that would have broken a human's neck. Ling Qi saw the flash of fangs of clear ice beneath billowing hair.
The spirit was beside her, close enough to feel the tickle of crystal hair through the too thin fabric of her scarf. 'Compact of iron, Compact of blood,' the wind whistled a song of chains older than mountains. 'Lost one carries iron, is not of the blood. Why should Black Skies Yearning deal with pretenders?"
"You take that back! Big Sister is not a pretender! I know you can feel Momma's mark!" Hanyi shouted, peeking out from behind her skirts. It startled Ling Qi when had she…
"Wibbliness is increasing by the second here," Sixiang said warily, and Ling Qi could not be sure if she had spoken aloud or in her mind.
Ling Qi felt the hiss of a cold breath as the spirit turned it's black gaze on Hanyi. "Broken thing speaks of lost Warm Breath's Ending, slain by its hand? Claims new blood?"
Ling Qi felt Hanyi flinch and stepped in front of her, meeting the spirit's deadly gaze. "I am sorry that you perceive things so. Deny my connection if you will, but not hers."
Ling Qi felt cold pressing down, but she remained upright and unflinching. Even as the spirit reached out, a sharp digit of frozen bone protruding from her sleeve to press against Ling Qi's cheek. Ling Qi took in a sharp breath as she flared her own ice qi.
For just an instant the howl of the wind ceased, and clear ice wrapped around bone turned black.
'New blood,' the spirit sang grudgingly, withdrawing, drifting back to a more comfortable distance. 'Compact holds, Lost one and the Broken may pass.'
Ling Qi felt a moment of relief, only for it to end as the spirit sang again. "Offerings stay."
Ling Qi spun around, only now realizing that she hadn't even noticed a reaction from her companions. They stood where she had left them, though the ground had vanished, but all four stood frozen, eyes staring blankly into the snow. Their qi was still, not dead but quiescent, with only one exception.
Beneath Cai Renxiang's coat, radiance gleamed and hungry threads seethed, stirring to wakefulness.
"That is not acceptable," Ling Qi said. "An offering can be arranged, but not my companions."
"Yeah, don't be greedy!" Hanyi said with false confidence. "Besides, you don't want to mess with Boss Lady's dress!"
The spirit, now looming tall over them, paused again, head tilting at an unnatural angle. Hanyi's words were ignored as she traced a bony finger along Gan Guangli's jaw. "Lost one has no claim, no blood nor mark on these. They are not yours. So they are mine."
Ling Qi's thoughts spun as she tried to think of how to convince the spirit otherwise. "I would contest that," she said eyeing Cai Renxiang with alarm. She could feel Liming doing something, power rising independent of her liege. Somehow the spirit didn't seem to notice that. Considering the dress' source it was nearly as alarming as the snow spirit.
<Sixiang, am I right in thinking she has them trapped in some kind of dream effect,> Ling Qi thought.
"Kinda like what happened to you back on the mountain yeah," Sixiang whispered.
"They wish to stay in desirous dreams," the spirit crooned, and already Ling Qi could feel heat being drawn from her companions. "My claim is stronger."
"Then you would not object to my trying to convince them otherwise," Ling Qi shot back. "I ask only for a fair chance."
Her words seemed to amuse the spirit, whose lolling head shifted the other way. "You think yourself more convincing than desire, lost one? Even the Hollow Child has enough darkness to fall," the spirit mused, peering at Cai Renxiang.
"I do," Ling Qi replied evenly. This was the spirit's weakness, it was a simple, primal thing. Ling Qi knew that people could break from their most fundamental urges. "Will you give me the chance?"
Black Sky's Yearning mulled her words. If nothing else Ling Qi would buy time until Liming did… whatever it was going to do. "A bargain, convince one and I will take but a small tithe from you all. Fail, and I shall have you too, Lost one, and the Broken can wander on."
Ling Qi swallowed, putting her hand on Hanyi's head. "Deal."
"Then choose," whispered the spirit.
[] Cai Renxiang
[] Gan Guangli
[] Meng Dan
[] Xia Lin
Oh what an interesting vote I missed. Go for CRX because it's the highest probability of success or go for someone else and leave her to Liming? Or maybe disregard success probability entirely and instead vote for the one you want to learn more about :Ü™
Edit: For the record I would have voted along the lines of interest and picked CRX :Ü™
lain
on
on
impassibility
She was wary of
coat's
spirit's
trespasses
»to« or »there was some threads of humanity in it, too, she could read it«
spirit's
Yeah, don't be greedy!
"I would contest that," she said eyeing Cai Renxiang with alarm.
desire, Lost one?
Sky's
buy
"What is to be our plan of action?" Cai Renxiang asked.
It had been several hours, and now it was nearly morning. With Meng Dan, Ling Qi had exhaustively gone over their surroundings again and again, and the results lay on the table before them, a highly detailed topographical map, with only a few blanks where their combined senses had failed to penetrate.
"I believe the best route is this one," Ling Qi said, tracing her finger along the more weathered mountains on the east side of the gorge. "There is a narrow path here, letting us avoid directly traversing the glacier, and low enough to avoid the worst of the winds."
"Although it is broken, the gaps should be little obstacle to travelers of our caliber, given the climbing gear we have been provided," Meng Dan said confidently.
"It would be unwise to let our feet leave the ground too often, given the fury of the wind spirits outside," Xia Lin agreed, examining the map. "You have already worked the delay into our schedule?"
"I have," Ling Qi said, dipping her head. "But the path is not wholly safe, there are three spirits in this gorge, and there is no way to bypass them all."
"You are more confident in negotiating with the one which presides over the lower mountainside then?" Gan Guangli asked, looming over the table. "Why so?"
Ling Qi was silent for a moment. Within her dantian, she felt Hanyi's mixed emotions, so closely mirroring her own. "The spirit of the snow seems to be most human-like. I'm not sure I could even get the glaciers attention, and the spirit of the winds seems less likely to stick to any deals, even if it might be easy to distract. I feel that the snow spirit is the one I may be able to successfully negotiate with."
She wasn't fool enough to think that potential similarity to her mentor would make it easy, not when she knew, in her bones, what had lain beneath Zeqing's 'civilized' facade. It was a human trait certainly, that endless desire, but that did not make it any less deadly.
"I will trust that your judgement of the matter is sound." Cai Renxiang said simply, cutting through her thoughts. "Gan Guangli, you will join me in warding our party from harm during the climb. Xia Lin, you will take point just ahead of Ling Qi and watch for other dangers while Ling Qi focuses her attention on the spirit. Meng Dan, simply remain close and observe as well as you can."
They all nodded as the heiress spoke, none of them had any objections. Shortly, they began to break down the camp, digging the pavilion free and packing up. The storm had lightened briefly, so it would be good to get started now.
Ling Qi just hoped that her judgement was sound.
***
The trip was slow going. The others were wrapped in heavy cloaks and coats lined with the warm fur of fire aspected beasts to ward against the extreme chill and the cutting wind without constantly expending qi. The path was a narrow thing, barely more than a meter wide at its greatest extent, only the constant shrieking wind keeping the snow from piling it to impassibility.
They made progress though, slowly creeping along the mountains, avoiding traipsing across the treacherous glacier below. They had to pause often when the wind picked up, even Ling Qi needing to hold tight to the high quality climbing cord strung between them while Gan sank his feet into the mountain stone and anchored them.
It had been so long since Ling Qi had thought to worry about the wind and cold, but out here, the very air was suffused with dense and potent qi bringing back the bite of the wind. Although she needed no coat for the cold, she transformed her mantle into a thick scarf and head wrapping to contain her hair and shield her eyes. She was wary of even trying to exercise any command of the wind here if she didn't have too.
She almost felt as if she had crossed back over into Dream as they progressed and the storm picked up. The dense white snowfall erased everything beyond arms reach, with only the radiant glow of Xia Lin's halberd ahead and Cai Renxiang's glow behind.
All the while she hummed under her breath, not the Frozen Soul Serenade, but one of the idle melodies she had heard her mentor singing in moments of idleness, letting her qi flow freely into the snow all around.
Even so, the hike was exhausting, the cold laid heavily upon them and as they progressed further, the snow only fell more heavily. Wet and clinging, even Ling Qi had to pause and shake it from her shoulders now and then. It wasn't only physical weight, but a mental one, making it a struggle to not just sit down and close her eyes. But they persevered, and Ling Qi felt warm qi spreading in her chest, even as the hems and folds of her gown lit with colorless light, bolstering her against the wind and the unnatural exhaustion.
She saved her qi for her song, broadcasting supplication, friendliness, the desire to speak. She began to notice now and then a shadow in the corner of her vision. A tall figure appearing between snowflakes. Once crouched on a ledge above, again in the sky off to their left, and last standing upon the ledge in front of them, just before the stone had collapsed under Xia Lin's feet, nearly carrying the girl down the mountainside along with several tons of ice and snow, unnatural weight hampering the usually nimble girl's reflexes.
As they regrouped in the aftermath of that, Ling Qi gritted her teeth behind her scarf as she gazed up into the white out sky. Just passively calling out for the spirit to contact them wasn't working.
"She's hungry and curious, I don't think many things come through here," Hanyi whispered in her thoughts.
"Everyone, we should stop for now," Ling Qi called, her mastery of music carrying her words even over the screaming wind. "I'm going to need to actually call the spirit if I want to talk to her."
Cai Renxiang, her face all but hidden in the fur lining of her coat's hood, made a single sharp gesture, indicating that she should proceed. Xia Lin and Gan Guangli gathered beside her watching the snowfall warily, and Meng Dan stood just behind, huddled in his thick coat.
Ling Qi pursed her lips as she turned back to the storm. The cloying feeling in the air was only growing worse, they couldn't just keep pressing through without the spirit's permission. That didn't mean the decision to outright call the spirits attention weighed any less heavily.
She raised her voice regardless, letting power flow through her meridians as she sang into the storm. Focusing on the flows of qi that rippled through the falling sheets of snow, she could see further into the nature of the spirit. In many ways it was simpler than Zeqing, not less powerful, but simply less complex. This spirit would not, she thought, really have the capacity to question her own nature.
But, that nature was fundamentally the same, emptiness, desire for heat and warmth and companionship. If they really had gone on, deeper into its power, they would have each found themselves drawn off, lost one by one to the freezing snow. But the spirit had noticed her. She could be certain of that.
So there was an edge of demand in her song, a tugging on the bond of kinship, however tenuous, resonating with the vibrations of the iron sliver she had palmed, which now grew so cold in her palm that it seemed to wrap around to heat.
The wind picked up, and the veil of snow thickened. Beneath the shriek of the storm, Ling Qi could feel the notes of a song. She saw the figure, standing out in the snowy sky.
Her robe was black and unadorned, it's hems drifting away in ragged threads that merged with the snowy shadows. The spirit's shoulders were hunched, empty sleeves hanging down in front of her body. Her hair billowed across the sky, and there was no point where Ling Qi could say for certain that the snow ended and the crystalline strands began. That same hair, wild and untamed blew ceaselessly, cloaking the spirit's visage, save for a single glimpse of a cold black pit in the shape of an eye with a single white spark of light at its core.
Ling Qi couldn't feel the stone under her feet anymore, it felt as if she were standing in the air.
"We're still where we started, no crossover yet, but things are a little thin," Sixiang whispered nervously.
"It feels like home," Hanyi muttered.
"Of course, Hanyi never left," Zhengui grumbled.
Ling Qi brought her hands together, and very carefully bowed, letting the song flowing from lips ring with supplication and the desire to speak.
'Lost one trespasses.' the spirit didn't really speak, so much as meaning impressed itself directly into her thoughts carried on the ethereal melody underlying the storm. 'Such riches you have. Joining?'
Ling Qi grimaced at the coldly envious song, so full of dark yearning to embrace and consume. "I cannot," she replied carefully. "I belong to another. We only want to pass through. Can we arrange passage?" Jealous, possessive, the spirit was, but it recognized kinship, there was some thread of humanity to it, she could read it in the spirit's qi, threads going south.
There was a rumble, like the start of an avalanche as the spirit's head twitched to the side, at an angle that would have broken a human's neck. Ling Qi saw the flash of fangs of clear ice beneath billowing hair.
The spirit was beside her, close enough to feel the tickle of crystal hair through the too thin fabric of her scarf. 'Compact of iron, Compact of blood,' the wind whistled a song of chains older than mountains. 'Lost one carries iron, is not of the blood. Why should Black Skies Yearning deal with pretenders?"
"You take that back! Big Sister is not a pretender! I know you can feel Momma's mark!" Hanyi shouted, peeking out from behind her skirts. It startled Ling Qi when had she…
"Wibbliness is increasing by the second here," Sixiang said warily, and Ling Qi could not be sure if she had spoken aloud or in her mind.
Ling Qi felt the hiss of a cold breath as the spirit turned it's black gaze on Hanyi. "Broken thing speaks of lost Warm Breath's Ending, slain by its hand? Claims new blood?"
Ling Qi felt Hanyi flinch and stepped in front of her, meeting the spirit's deadly gaze. "I am sorry that you perceive things so. Deny my connection if you will, but not hers."
Ling Qi felt cold pressing down, but she remained upright and unflinching. Even as the spirit reached out, a sharp digit of frozen bone protruding from her sleeve to press against Ling Qi's cheek. Ling Qi took in a sharp breath as she flared her own ice qi.
For just an instant the howl of the wind ceased, and clear ice wrapped around bone turned black.
'New blood,' the spirit sang grudgingly, withdrawing, drifting back to a more comfortable distance. 'Compact holds, Lost one and the Broken may pass.'
Ling Qi felt a moment of relief, only for it to end as the spirit sang again. "Offerings stay."
Ling Qi spun around, only now realizing that she hadn't even noticed a reaction from her companions. They stood where she had left them, though the ground had vanished, but all four stood frozen, eyes staring blankly into the snow. Their qi was still, not dead but quiescent, with only one exception.
Beneath Cai Renxiang's coat, radiance gleamed and hungry threads seethed, stirring to wakefulness.
"That is not acceptable," Ling Qi said. "An offering can be arranged, but not my companions."
"Yeah, don't be greedy!" Hanyi said with false confidence. "Besides, you don't want to mess with Boss Lady's dress!"
The spirit, now looming tall over them, paused again, head tilting at an unnatural angle. Hanyi's words were ignored as she traced a bony finger along Gan Guangli's jaw. "Lost one has no claim, no blood nor mark on these. They are not yours. So they are mine."
Ling Qi's thoughts spun as she tried to think of how to convince the spirit otherwise. "I would contest that," she said eyeing Cai Renxiang with alarm. She could feel Liming doing something, power rising independent of her liege. Somehow the spirit didn't seem to notice that. Considering the dress' source it was nearly as alarming as the snow spirit.
<Sixiang, am I right in thinking she has them trapped in some kind of dream effect,> Ling Qi thought.
"Kinda like what happened to you back on the mountain yeah," Sixiang whispered.
"They wish to stay in desirous dreams," the spirit crooned, and already Ling Qi could feel heat being drawn from her companions. "My claim is stronger."
"Then you would not object to my trying to convince them otherwise," Ling Qi shot back. "I ask only for a fair chance."
Her words seemed to amuse the spirit, whose lolling head shifted the other way. "You think yourself more convincing than desire, lost one? Even the Hollow Child has enough darkness to fall," the spirit mused, peering at Cai Renxiang.
"I do," Ling Qi replied evenly. This was the spirit's weakness, it was a simple, primal thing. Ling Qi knew that people could break from their most fundamental urges. "Will you give me the chance?"
Black Sky's Yearning mulled her words. If nothing else Ling Qi would buy time until Liming did… whatever it was going to do. "A bargain, convince one and I will take but a small tithe from you all. Fail, and I shall have you too, Lost one, and the Broken can wander on."
Ling Qi swallowed, putting her hand on Hanyi's head. "Deal."
"Then choose," whispered the spirit.
[] Cai Renxiang
[] Gan Guangli
[] Meng Dan
[] Xia Lin
Edit: For the record I would have voted along the lines of interest and picked CRX :Ü™
Last edited:
- Location
- All around you.
- Pronouns
- Lord/Master/God
Now I'm imagining them combining together like in a Sentai show but since they're not mechs, they just hold onto each. Meng Dan – in scholarly robes – and Xia Lin – in full armour – kneeling on the ground, Cai Renxiang standing on their backs with Ling Qi and Gan Guangli hold her hands and also stand with one foot each on Meng Dan and Xia Lin respectively and the other foot hanging in the air. Now we just need someone to sit on Cai Renxiang's shoulders
:Ü™
Cecylene
Eternal Idea Engine
- Location
- Massachusetts
- Pronouns
- He/They
The Cheerleading Pyramid of Power cannot be stopped, it will be assembled and win the regional championship trophy!Now I'm imagining them combining together like in a Sentai show but since they're not mechs, they just hold onto each. Meng Dan – in scholarly robes – and Xia Lin – in full armour – kneeling on the ground, Cai Renxiang standing on their backs with Ling Qi and Gan Guangli hold her hands and also stand with one foot each on Meng Dan and Xia Lin respectively and the other foot hanging in the air. Now we just need someone to sit on Cai Renxiang's shoulders
Turn 11: Arc 5-4
In the end, it was hardly a choice. There was only one person who she really knew well here. She doubted Cai Renxiang would be pleased to have her privacy invaded so, but she was also pragmatic, her liege would understand.
Ling Qi nodded tersely to the spirit and stepped up to the other girl, a single striding crossing the gulf of white. She had never taken the step of entering someone else's dream before but here with the world thinned by the power of the ice spirit, she was sure she could do it. All the same however-
"I've got your back," Sixiang murmured. "It'll be just like learning the new steps of a dance."
Ling Qi nodded faintly, looking at Cai Renxiang's blank frozen expression and the ominous glow under her cloak. She could 'see' if she really focused her senses, the fragments of imagery in her spirit, the pulse of thought traveling through her aura.
"Hanyi, Zhengui, keep an eye out for me while I do this," she murmured. She didn't want to bring them in with her, not only would it be harder, there was no reason to expose whatever dream her liege was in further.
Their grumbling responses were expected, but she wouldn't budge on this. Taking a deep breath, Ling Qi reached out, not quite grasping Cai Renxiang's shoulder, but rather giving herself a focus for contact with the girl's unyielding spirit. The feeling translated felt like grasping unbending steel, with the texture of porcelaine.
With Sixiang's guiding whisper in her ear, she tugged aside the veil.
Ling Qi gasped, her hand flying to her chest as her heart thundered in her ears. It had been incredibly uncomfortable, like being pulled apart, reassembled and then forced through closely spaced metal bars. However, she could feel it, she was not in the material world anymore. Why then, was it so dark?
A faint sound drew her attention, and she glanced down to see something strange, rolling out of the slowly lightening dark. It was a childs toy, a carved wooden horse set on a wheeled platform. Richly painted, with white fur and a golden bridle, it seemed almost real in its detail. Rolling across the polished wooden floor slowly coming into view under her feet, it made a quiet squeak with each rotation of its wheels. One of them was worn or damaged.
It bumped up against her foot, and only then did Ling Qi notice the line of dark liquid trailing its path. Raising her head, peering back along the toys path, she met yellow and crimson eyes. She flinched without thinking, stepping back from the ominous weight of those eyes, before she even had time to take in more than their color. What she saw when she did made her want to take another step back.
It bore the shape of a young woman, sitting haphazardly on the floor, chin resting on one knee. Before it was an array of toy soldiers, their paint shining like real steel, it was a grand collection, with many horses like the one by her foot, save that they still had riders, officers with colorful banners upon their backs.
The missing rider was held loosely in the thing's porcelain white hand. It wasn't flesh though, but white cloth or silk, constructed with stitchwork so fine that Ling Qi would not have been able to see it if not for the welling blood which dripped from beneath the seams, staining the toy in its hand.
Ling Qi swallowed hard as she stared into the things eyes. They weren't natural, looking instead like the painted glass eyes of a doll, glowing beneath a veil of black hair that concealed the rest of its face. "...Liming?"
The spirit let out a growl so low that Ling Qi could feel in her bones more than hear it in her ears. More details of the room continued to resolve, the small but richly upholstered bed, the bright wall hangings, an entire wall taken up by polished bookshelves stuffed with tomes large and small, their spines smeared with bloody handprints. She glanced behind her, where the dream mist remained, and saw Sixiang, looking frustrated standing on the other side of bars of polished steel. Their lips moved but blurred beyond reading, nor did any sound escape.
She looked back to see the spirit, Liming, standing. Its movements were unsettling. Not jerky or inhuman in the slightest, but nevertheless deeply distressing in a way Ling Qi could not put to words. Its body was a rich gown of white and gold, embroidered with dozens of crimson butterflies, each of which glittered wetly in the dim and sourceless light. A bare foot kicked over rows of soldiers as it stepped forward, and Ling Qi could swear she heard screams in the clatter of wood.
Ling Qi took another step back, raising her hands placatingly. "Liming," she said carefully. "I'm only here to help. I need to wake Cai Renxiang up, that's all."
Liming paused, staring at her with burning, glassy eyes. As her senses grew used to this place, Ling Qi could feel the texture of the power that boiled up between Liming's bleeding seams. It was anger and pain and resentment, so thick that she could nearly taste copper and ash on her tongue.
But, little of that feeling seemed focused on her. And, she saw the spark of comprehension in its eyes.
Sub-Bond Revealed
Cai Renxiang: 3
-Liming: -1
Licking her lips, Ling Qi continued. Liming was capable of understanding her, that was good. "If things go badly here, then the mission the Duchess-"
The room rattled as Liming snarled, its gown rustling as sourceless wind erupted from the force of the sound, and Ling Qi saw the spirit's face for the first time. Her eyes widened in shock as she stared at the face of her liege.
Its face was flesh, not like the cloth that formed the rest of the spirit, and its glass eyes were rimmed in red, where the artificial met the natural. But Liming's lips were stitched shut, held closed by a neat cross stitch of steel thread, binding its lips completely shut. Ling Qi was thankful the high collar of its gown hid any further seams.
Ling Qi felt her stomach churn a little at the implication of the shared face. "I'm sorry," she said quickly, not entirely certain what had set the spirit off. The Duchess? She was the one that had made the spirit!
...She supposed though, that Cai Shenhua had made Cai Renxiang as well.
"I just want to help," she continued quickly. "Please let me talk to Renxiang?"
Liming approached, gown and hair settling, and Ling Qi held very still as it looked her over. There was a deep inhaling of air, and Ling Qi felt her hair flutter as the shadows behind Liming deepened into the vague shape of something far larger. It reached toward her with bleeding fingers, fingers she now noticed marked by rougher stitching at their tips. It was as if they had been chopped off and replaced. She felt a flush of heat, emanating from her gown and Liming's hand stopped short as the spirit let out a low hiss, less enraged than its other exclamations.
She looked back up and felt, for the first time the pressure of its-her presence lessen.
Ling Qi kept her peace. She didn't know enough to say what would convince the spirit and what would anger her.
Liming turned away from her, and there was a click as the door, the bedroom door creaked open, just a little. Ling Qi breathed a sigh of relief as the spirit padded away, crouching down to begin sorting through scattered toy soldiers, reassembling their exacting formation. Looking over her shoulder, she shot the worried looking Sixiang a smile.
Sixiang frowned at her but nodded, giving her a thumbs up.
Ling Qi headed for the door. That was the first obstacle down she supposed.
That was fine, she had no desire to re-enter that unsettling room.
She turned her gaze back to the town, letting three silver wisps spin out to widen her range of vision. What she found was shockingly mundane. People worked and traded and talked going about their day on streets laid out in geometrically perfect rectangles. The streets were paved with clean gray stone, marked only by the days dust. Even as her wisps rose, peering out past the high curtain walls, she found the town only continued much the same minus a certain degree of lavishness.
Something about it bothered her though, and it took her a moment to realise what it was. People were happy, but that wasn't it. It wasn't some unnatural forced cheer. She watched an official and a merchant dickering over fees, and coin changed hands, but the merchant showed no resentment and the official lacked the smug air she associated with governing officials. Further out, a pair of guards patrolling the dusty but well kept lanes in the farmers market chatted amiably with a man and his wife, their weapons holstered.
...There weren't any beggars. No dirty children looking for marks among the crowded market stalls. No glowering toughs shying like beaten dogs from the guards and raising their hackles to everyone else. When Ling Qi landed lightly in the street below her rooftop entrance, people startled, and many bowed, but it was in respect rather than fear.
It was bizarre enough that she didn't notice the cracks at first. Individuals she didn't focus on were subtly artificial in their movement, their faces blurred. Subtly repetitive patterns to the actions taking place gave everything in her peripheral vision an uncanny air.
She suspected a vision like this was a strain on a spirit as wild as Black Sky's Yearning. She was, Ling Qi knew too well, a personal sort of desire. A mismatch for Cai Renxiang. How then was she tricking the girl, sheer brute power overriding her senses or…
Ling Qi's wisp spun toward the innermost ring of the city where a modest manor in the towns center saw a long line of officials entering and leaving the well kept grounds in a continuous stream.
...Of course, Renxiang would be buried in work, even in her dream of a perfect world.
Ling Qi cast one more glance at the imperfect illusion around her, and then away. Somehow, even when she had resolved to follow Renxiang, some part of her had still failed to even picture the world the girl wanted. She'd thought still of the immaculate figures dancing with the Duchess' City of steel.
...This didn't seem so bad.
No one barred her path as she made her way to the governors manor, indeed the guards at the gates ushered her past the line of waiting officials, who bowed their heads when she looked at them. It took little effort to find Renxiang either. The maze of bureaucracy parted before her like water, leading her eventually to a well lit study. There, she found Renxiang.
The heiress sat behind a large desk arranged such that it was perfectly centered between a pair of high corner bookshelves, and sat in a low backed and austere chair of pale wood. She looked older, Ling Qi realised, stopping in the doorway, not a great deal, but a little older. It wasn't the matured lines of her face that made Ling Qi stare though, it was the girls clothing. She wasn't wearing Liming.
Her gown was still mostly white and gold, but the red was reduced to small butterfly shaped broach at her throat and the underlayer of the gown was a pale sky blue. Her hair was trimmed short as well, cut just beneath her ears. It was such a small, austere change, and yet for Cai Renxiang, it stood out as sorely as a second head.
"Did something urgent turn up on your inspection, Baroness?" Cai Renxiang asked, not looking up from the document on her desk. The brush in her hand continued to move quickly and precisely, filling in the text-a set of promotion announcements, it looked like.
"Nothing of the sort," Ling Qi said carefully stepping inside. She wasn't quite sure enough of what she was dealing with yet. "I have my eyes out still though."
Her wisps were still outside.
Cai Renxiang frowned a little. "You are early then, our tea luncheon is scheduled sixty five minutes hence. There is a great deal of work to do yet on the transfer."
"Transfer?" Ling Qi asked.
Finally Cai Renxiang looked up, exasperated. "Yes, Ling Qi, the transfer to the capital. Mother sent her announcement that she would be retiring to closed door cultivation just this morning. Do not tell me it somehow slipped your mind."
"Of course not, it just seems unreal still," Ling Qi deflected, studying the girl more closely. Despite her exasperated expression, there was something which felt off about her expression. Again, it was such a simple thing that it took a moment to process. Renxiang was happy too. The habitual closed nature of her body language and expression was lightened in a way that felt bizarre.
Cai Renxiang shook her head slightly, turning her eyes back to her work. "You are qualified for your promotion to viscount Ling Qi, we have had this conversation before. You have my full trust that the administration of this region will remain in good hands. Now, we have our luncheon scheduled, and we can speak further then. I need to finish these documents before…"
"Lady Ren, it is time for your appointment!"
"Before that, yes," Renxiang sighed.
Ling Qi turned toward the source of the voice. There behind her stood Lin Hai in all of his fabulous glory. He leaned languidly against the doorframe, smiling impishly. "Oh Lady Ren, don't be like that. I know you have been looking forward to seeing what I have come up with for your coronation gown."
Ling Qi frowned at him, unlike the people outside, the officials and the supplicants and the citizens, there was no edge of unreality or unfinished air to him. The fabric of the dream was so much more solid here, in this office, and in his person.
Behind her, Renxiang sighed as she carefully blotted the ink on the document before her. "I suppose I have, Uncle."
Lin Hai glanced toward her, seemingly noticing her frown. "Something wrong Miss Ling?"
"Just a little surprised to see you here is all," Ling Qi said quietly. It looked like the spirit was right, there was at least a little selfishness in her liege. She was beginning to see the shape of this dream, she thought.
"Where else would I be?" he chuckled, beckoning Renxiang out as he straightened up. "You are an odd girl at times Baroness."
"She is," Cai Renxiang agreed. "But, if you are here, would you like to attend the fitting? Your perspective may offer valuable critique."
Ling Qi was silent for a moment, a sinking feeling in her stomach. She knew, knew for certain a way to break this fantasy. Cai Renxiang had already been fitted for coronation-and everything else. She had met Liming after all, and she remembered Cai Renxiang's words regarding the fitting.
She hesitated to bring it up here though, in this land of memory and dream. It would be painful.
Yet it would be certain. There were other lines of attack, true. She could prod her liege about this coronation, did she really believe her Mother would retire when they were both still so young? She could prod her to look outside, to really look and see the gaps in the illusion. She could point out to her how easy this was, that she had achieved such change in so short a time when they both knew that their path was going to be hard and arduous.
Yet they were all arguments of logic, and logic was a soft and easy thing to mold and twist, to shape into rationalization for what you wanted.
All the same, she knew Cai Renxiang. If anyone could be pulled from their dreams by harsh rationale, it was her.
"Ling Qi?" asked Cai Renxiang, raising an eyebrow.
[] Remind Cai Renxiang that has already had her fitting
[] Use every scrap of reason and rhetoric you can muster to open her eyes.
Ling Qi nodded tersely to the spirit and stepped up to the other girl, a single striding crossing the gulf of white. She had never taken the step of entering someone else's dream before but here with the world thinned by the power of the ice spirit, she was sure she could do it. All the same however-
"I've got your back," Sixiang murmured. "It'll be just like learning the new steps of a dance."
Ling Qi nodded faintly, looking at Cai Renxiang's blank frozen expression and the ominous glow under her cloak. She could 'see' if she really focused her senses, the fragments of imagery in her spirit, the pulse of thought traveling through her aura.
"Hanyi, Zhengui, keep an eye out for me while I do this," she murmured. She didn't want to bring them in with her, not only would it be harder, there was no reason to expose whatever dream her liege was in further.
Their grumbling responses were expected, but she wouldn't budge on this. Taking a deep breath, Ling Qi reached out, not quite grasping Cai Renxiang's shoulder, but rather giving herself a focus for contact with the girl's unyielding spirit. The feeling translated felt like grasping unbending steel, with the texture of porcelaine.
With Sixiang's guiding whisper in her ear, she tugged aside the veil.
***
Ling Qi gasped, her hand flying to her chest as her heart thundered in her ears. It had been incredibly uncomfortable, like being pulled apart, reassembled and then forced through closely spaced metal bars. However, she could feel it, she was not in the material world anymore. Why then, was it so dark?
A faint sound drew her attention, and she glanced down to see something strange, rolling out of the slowly lightening dark. It was a childs toy, a carved wooden horse set on a wheeled platform. Richly painted, with white fur and a golden bridle, it seemed almost real in its detail. Rolling across the polished wooden floor slowly coming into view under her feet, it made a quiet squeak with each rotation of its wheels. One of them was worn or damaged.
It bumped up against her foot, and only then did Ling Qi notice the line of dark liquid trailing its path. Raising her head, peering back along the toys path, she met yellow and crimson eyes. She flinched without thinking, stepping back from the ominous weight of those eyes, before she even had time to take in more than their color. What she saw when she did made her want to take another step back.
It bore the shape of a young woman, sitting haphazardly on the floor, chin resting on one knee. Before it was an array of toy soldiers, their paint shining like real steel, it was a grand collection, with many horses like the one by her foot, save that they still had riders, officers with colorful banners upon their backs.
The missing rider was held loosely in the thing's porcelain white hand. It wasn't flesh though, but white cloth or silk, constructed with stitchwork so fine that Ling Qi would not have been able to see it if not for the welling blood which dripped from beneath the seams, staining the toy in its hand.
Ling Qi swallowed hard as she stared into the things eyes. They weren't natural, looking instead like the painted glass eyes of a doll, glowing beneath a veil of black hair that concealed the rest of its face. "...Liming?"
The spirit let out a growl so low that Ling Qi could feel in her bones more than hear it in her ears. More details of the room continued to resolve, the small but richly upholstered bed, the bright wall hangings, an entire wall taken up by polished bookshelves stuffed with tomes large and small, their spines smeared with bloody handprints. She glanced behind her, where the dream mist remained, and saw Sixiang, looking frustrated standing on the other side of bars of polished steel. Their lips moved but blurred beyond reading, nor did any sound escape.
She looked back to see the spirit, Liming, standing. Its movements were unsettling. Not jerky or inhuman in the slightest, but nevertheless deeply distressing in a way Ling Qi could not put to words. Its body was a rich gown of white and gold, embroidered with dozens of crimson butterflies, each of which glittered wetly in the dim and sourceless light. A bare foot kicked over rows of soldiers as it stepped forward, and Ling Qi could swear she heard screams in the clatter of wood.
Ling Qi took another step back, raising her hands placatingly. "Liming," she said carefully. "I'm only here to help. I need to wake Cai Renxiang up, that's all."
Liming paused, staring at her with burning, glassy eyes. As her senses grew used to this place, Ling Qi could feel the texture of the power that boiled up between Liming's bleeding seams. It was anger and pain and resentment, so thick that she could nearly taste copper and ash on her tongue.
But, little of that feeling seemed focused on her. And, she saw the spark of comprehension in its eyes.
Sub-Bond Revealed
Cai Renxiang: 3
-Liming: -1
Licking her lips, Ling Qi continued. Liming was capable of understanding her, that was good. "If things go badly here, then the mission the Duchess-"
The room rattled as Liming snarled, its gown rustling as sourceless wind erupted from the force of the sound, and Ling Qi saw the spirit's face for the first time. Her eyes widened in shock as she stared at the face of her liege.
Its face was flesh, not like the cloth that formed the rest of the spirit, and its glass eyes were rimmed in red, where the artificial met the natural. But Liming's lips were stitched shut, held closed by a neat cross stitch of steel thread, binding its lips completely shut. Ling Qi was thankful the high collar of its gown hid any further seams.
Ling Qi felt her stomach churn a little at the implication of the shared face. "I'm sorry," she said quickly, not entirely certain what had set the spirit off. The Duchess? She was the one that had made the spirit!
...She supposed though, that Cai Shenhua had made Cai Renxiang as well.
"I just want to help," she continued quickly. "Please let me talk to Renxiang?"
Liming approached, gown and hair settling, and Ling Qi held very still as it looked her over. There was a deep inhaling of air, and Ling Qi felt her hair flutter as the shadows behind Liming deepened into the vague shape of something far larger. It reached toward her with bleeding fingers, fingers she now noticed marked by rougher stitching at their tips. It was as if they had been chopped off and replaced. She felt a flush of heat, emanating from her gown and Liming's hand stopped short as the spirit let out a low hiss, less enraged than its other exclamations.
She looked back up and felt, for the first time the pressure of its-her presence lessen.
Ling Qi kept her peace. She didn't know enough to say what would convince the spirit and what would anger her.
Liming turned away from her, and there was a click as the door, the bedroom door creaked open, just a little. Ling Qi breathed a sigh of relief as the spirit padded away, crouching down to begin sorting through scattered toy soldiers, reassembling their exacting formation. Looking over her shoulder, she shot the worried looking Sixiang a smile.
Sixiang frowned at her but nodded, giving her a thumbs up.
Ling Qi headed for the door. That was the first obstacle down she supposed.
***
The light that struck her eyes was nearly blinding. Ling Qi shaded her eyes, blinking away the spots born of the sudden change change as she peered at her surroundings. She stood on the roof of a large home in the middle of a bustling town. Faintly she heard the click of a closing door behind her, but glancing back, there was only air. Even feeling at the fabric of the dream, she felt only an impassable wall of unwelcomeness.That was fine, she had no desire to re-enter that unsettling room.
She turned her gaze back to the town, letting three silver wisps spin out to widen her range of vision. What she found was shockingly mundane. People worked and traded and talked going about their day on streets laid out in geometrically perfect rectangles. The streets were paved with clean gray stone, marked only by the days dust. Even as her wisps rose, peering out past the high curtain walls, she found the town only continued much the same minus a certain degree of lavishness.
Something about it bothered her though, and it took her a moment to realise what it was. People were happy, but that wasn't it. It wasn't some unnatural forced cheer. She watched an official and a merchant dickering over fees, and coin changed hands, but the merchant showed no resentment and the official lacked the smug air she associated with governing officials. Further out, a pair of guards patrolling the dusty but well kept lanes in the farmers market chatted amiably with a man and his wife, their weapons holstered.
...There weren't any beggars. No dirty children looking for marks among the crowded market stalls. No glowering toughs shying like beaten dogs from the guards and raising their hackles to everyone else. When Ling Qi landed lightly in the street below her rooftop entrance, people startled, and many bowed, but it was in respect rather than fear.
It was bizarre enough that she didn't notice the cracks at first. Individuals she didn't focus on were subtly artificial in their movement, their faces blurred. Subtly repetitive patterns to the actions taking place gave everything in her peripheral vision an uncanny air.
She suspected a vision like this was a strain on a spirit as wild as Black Sky's Yearning. She was, Ling Qi knew too well, a personal sort of desire. A mismatch for Cai Renxiang. How then was she tricking the girl, sheer brute power overriding her senses or…
Ling Qi's wisp spun toward the innermost ring of the city where a modest manor in the towns center saw a long line of officials entering and leaving the well kept grounds in a continuous stream.
...Of course, Renxiang would be buried in work, even in her dream of a perfect world.
Ling Qi cast one more glance at the imperfect illusion around her, and then away. Somehow, even when she had resolved to follow Renxiang, some part of her had still failed to even picture the world the girl wanted. She'd thought still of the immaculate figures dancing with the Duchess' City of steel.
...This didn't seem so bad.
No one barred her path as she made her way to the governors manor, indeed the guards at the gates ushered her past the line of waiting officials, who bowed their heads when she looked at them. It took little effort to find Renxiang either. The maze of bureaucracy parted before her like water, leading her eventually to a well lit study. There, she found Renxiang.
The heiress sat behind a large desk arranged such that it was perfectly centered between a pair of high corner bookshelves, and sat in a low backed and austere chair of pale wood. She looked older, Ling Qi realised, stopping in the doorway, not a great deal, but a little older. It wasn't the matured lines of her face that made Ling Qi stare though, it was the girls clothing. She wasn't wearing Liming.
Her gown was still mostly white and gold, but the red was reduced to small butterfly shaped broach at her throat and the underlayer of the gown was a pale sky blue. Her hair was trimmed short as well, cut just beneath her ears. It was such a small, austere change, and yet for Cai Renxiang, it stood out as sorely as a second head.
"Did something urgent turn up on your inspection, Baroness?" Cai Renxiang asked, not looking up from the document on her desk. The brush in her hand continued to move quickly and precisely, filling in the text-a set of promotion announcements, it looked like.
"Nothing of the sort," Ling Qi said carefully stepping inside. She wasn't quite sure enough of what she was dealing with yet. "I have my eyes out still though."
Her wisps were still outside.
Cai Renxiang frowned a little. "You are early then, our tea luncheon is scheduled sixty five minutes hence. There is a great deal of work to do yet on the transfer."
"Transfer?" Ling Qi asked.
Finally Cai Renxiang looked up, exasperated. "Yes, Ling Qi, the transfer to the capital. Mother sent her announcement that she would be retiring to closed door cultivation just this morning. Do not tell me it somehow slipped your mind."
"Of course not, it just seems unreal still," Ling Qi deflected, studying the girl more closely. Despite her exasperated expression, there was something which felt off about her expression. Again, it was such a simple thing that it took a moment to process. Renxiang was happy too. The habitual closed nature of her body language and expression was lightened in a way that felt bizarre.
Cai Renxiang shook her head slightly, turning her eyes back to her work. "You are qualified for your promotion to viscount Ling Qi, we have had this conversation before. You have my full trust that the administration of this region will remain in good hands. Now, we have our luncheon scheduled, and we can speak further then. I need to finish these documents before…"
"Lady Ren, it is time for your appointment!"
"Before that, yes," Renxiang sighed.
Ling Qi turned toward the source of the voice. There behind her stood Lin Hai in all of his fabulous glory. He leaned languidly against the doorframe, smiling impishly. "Oh Lady Ren, don't be like that. I know you have been looking forward to seeing what I have come up with for your coronation gown."
Ling Qi frowned at him, unlike the people outside, the officials and the supplicants and the citizens, there was no edge of unreality or unfinished air to him. The fabric of the dream was so much more solid here, in this office, and in his person.
Behind her, Renxiang sighed as she carefully blotted the ink on the document before her. "I suppose I have, Uncle."
Lin Hai glanced toward her, seemingly noticing her frown. "Something wrong Miss Ling?"
"Just a little surprised to see you here is all," Ling Qi said quietly. It looked like the spirit was right, there was at least a little selfishness in her liege. She was beginning to see the shape of this dream, she thought.
"Where else would I be?" he chuckled, beckoning Renxiang out as he straightened up. "You are an odd girl at times Baroness."
"She is," Cai Renxiang agreed. "But, if you are here, would you like to attend the fitting? Your perspective may offer valuable critique."
Ling Qi was silent for a moment, a sinking feeling in her stomach. She knew, knew for certain a way to break this fantasy. Cai Renxiang had already been fitted for coronation-and everything else. She had met Liming after all, and she remembered Cai Renxiang's words regarding the fitting.
She hesitated to bring it up here though, in this land of memory and dream. It would be painful.
Yet it would be certain. There were other lines of attack, true. She could prod her liege about this coronation, did she really believe her Mother would retire when they were both still so young? She could prod her to look outside, to really look and see the gaps in the illusion. She could point out to her how easy this was, that she had achieved such change in so short a time when they both knew that their path was going to be hard and arduous.
Yet they were all arguments of logic, and logic was a soft and easy thing to mold and twist, to shape into rationalization for what you wanted.
All the same, she knew Cai Renxiang. If anyone could be pulled from their dreams by harsh rationale, it was her.
"Ling Qi?" asked Cai Renxiang, raising an eyebrow.
[] Remind Cai Renxiang that has already had her fitting
[] Use every scrap of reason and rhetoric you can muster to open her eyes.
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fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
If we do this and it works I expect that it will give Renxiang a useful advanced insight.
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Exhibit #137 of why Cai Shenhua was and is a Bad Mother.
The fingers are probably Renxiang's work, from her continued severing of Liming's influence, but the facial transplant and mouth binding are definitely Cai Shenhua's doing.
In other words, the animalistic growling we saw in the past from Liming and Cifeng aren't natural; Cai Shenhua deliberately mutilated them to silence them!
- Location
- Canada
I really hate to say this but sometimes ripping the bandaid off is better. I don't think Cai is someone who would appreciate Ling Qi taking a softer stance here, though I really really don't want to hurt her, here in her perfect dream especially.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I don't think we're in a position where we can sacrifice certainty. The second option has lovely flavor, trusting in our leige's ability to break her illusion with her iron grip on reason and logic, but remember that everyone is fucked if Qi fails to persuade her.
But also, wow, good look into my longstanding favorite character. This is the bright future she dreams of. Liming is sadly built entirely out of red flags.
But also, wow, good look into my longstanding favorite character. This is the bright future she dreams of. Liming is sadly built entirely out of red flags.