Ling Qi spiraled up, away from the foul waters below, clogged with the gore of the broken giants corpse and the pain of the living ones. Up among the now rhythmically pulsing blue crystals growing organically from the cavern walls, casting her shadow flickering shifts along the curving tunnel walls.
"Are you certain you're well after getting…. Into that?" Ling Qi asked quietly. She kept her pace sedate, her hands spread out to her sides, no flicker of qi running through her more offensive meridians. She was being watched, and the spirit was rightfully wary.
"I mean, I need like a dozen hot baths, but I'm good, I'm not gonna get polluted by a lil corpse juice and puppet strings," Sixiang said.
"How would a bath even help you?" Ling Qi asked idly.
"I mean it'd have to be like a purification bath, with some pretty girls and boys waving incense sticks over it. I guess I would just kinda dissolve into the water and let the bad filter out and sink to the bottom?"
Ling Qi hummed. Sixiang would have to settle for a song and an ice bath. Heating water wasn't really in her skillset.
"I'll take it!"
She rolled her eyes fondly, but her expression swiftly became troubled, it was easy to look over in the chaos, but… Sixiang's injury wasn't completely extinguished.
"Neither is yours."
She bowed her head, that was fair, she just…
"Worried I'll hurt myself?" Sixiang huffed. "It's down far enough, shrunk enough. I'm digesting it."
She pursed her lips, that was more worrying.
"Hey hey, dissolution and smelting ain't too far apart on the first step. Don't tell me you haven't understood those flames too."
She had, in a small way. She rejected the totality of what Xia Ren was… but there were elements in her whose resonation couldn't be ignored. Together with Still Waters, showing her two paths community could take to butchery.
And the niggling worry that there was no path to changing ones world that was not a bloody one.
Was the Emerald Mourner truly wrong? Could a sovereign that did not impose their will on others exist?
That was the sort of navel gazing which belonged in late night meditation within ones chambers though, she shook the thought away.
"I think it's gonna depend a lot on your definition of impose," Sixiang said quietly.
Perhaps. Ling Qi allowed.
Qiyi hummed a little tune in her mind, flexing and weaving threads, casting off the filth that had found its way onto the fabric. She heard them, even understood a little, Ling Qi thought, but found the conversation wholly uninteresting.
Dresses were only concerned with their wearer after all. They rose into the crystal chamber on a slow column of bubbles. The cyan crystal was dim, a large part of its right side dark gray and lightless, tendrils of that discolouration reaching deep into its churning core.
She bowed, arms spread wide, sleeves billowing the water. "Master of the cycle, of lighted stone and song in the deeps, this one humbly greets you. Should you wish another title, please inform this ignorant guest."
She didn't speak those words though, instead, a song, the low piping moans of winds through air gaps in deep tunnels, the higher song of rushing zephyr's though the fluted passages of the upper mountain, the spirits own tongue, gleaned from a touch upon its nature.
Cold song, frozen song, mountains high and skies white. Not of here, not of deep, in lightless dark to creep. In tepid water ne'er hot or cold, in ruin, in rot. WHY?"
The final word was a demand, the spirits irritable perceptions still run through with shades of pain, like a man with broken bones jutting from his flesh.
"In claim, in livelihood, from peaks far and high. Land stamped for men to live, by dragon's spark and High Throne of Seasons, I their watcher, beheld the rot, beheld the fingers of the enemy, the trees and peaks war with rotting deeps. What good a foe, looming over the homestead, when one might have a neighbor instead."
She chose her pitch and tone carefully, driven by such pain she could not expect the spirit to be terribly reasonable, even if she understood its nature.
"And you don't got that. I can't get a proper read on this thing either, too much junk in the tunnels… Not really a spirit lord, like lil Zhengui, but something kinda like your old teacher, Master of this place alone… something about balance?"
She thought that was a foundation, but not the purpose. …Fusion? Combination? The making of things from disparate parts. That was the echo she could glean.
The churning waters had stilled with her response, a flash of actinic light stirring in the depths of the watery qi. Long, long the lords of sky and river are gone, the builders gone, hunted. Ignorant.
Implying it was a work related to the great Peaks of the capital? She supposed that was the most oft spoke theory of the Argent Vents as well. "Gone, gone, gone. No claim do I make to heritage. Only life lived now."
"Deeps. Deeping does not belong above. Above. Beneath. Apart. Not to meet."
"We would make that so. My companion bears a seal to make it so, if we may but know where to go," Ling Qi replied, maintaining her bow even amidst the roiling of the waters in the chamber. "Unless there is more, good neighbor, which might aid the quest?"
"My blood spilled, my children broken, not all by impurities touch. I bleed, the ichor on your blade."
"I won't deny," Ling Qi sang back. "Cruel parasite's, cold comfort. Yet. Who dares demand that one does not defend what is theirs?"
She raised her head, looking directly into the crystal. Though the spirit was mightier than her, as before…. She was not here as a supplicant, there was a limit to respect.
"Water washes, purifies, second only to flame, extinguished first. Broken, weak still, much strength is lost, and so the tunnels are polluted."
Ling Qi paused. Parsing what had been requested.
"Ling Qi, even you ain't gonna be able to restore a spirit this big without tiring yourself out," Sixiang warned.
Ling Qi understood that, however…. Li Suyin had built a siphon for lunar qi that the others were even now guarding on the surface. She did not know that it could handle the throughput.
"My ice, my song does not reverberate so loud. Yet moon above shines, and artifice drinks so very deep. My companion though, would need to speak."
There was a long pause, a churning frustration like a fish trapped in an unbreaking net.
"I accept. Bring thy kin."
She bowed again, and descended with haste.
***
AN: Short one today guys, I underestimated how much would be needed for this section, the update on Wednesday will be full length with a vote though.
