Forge of Destiny

Threads Chapter 554 Emerald Dream 4

The Dancer extended her hand and crooked a finger, and Ling Qi drew in a sharp breath as she felt something scrape through her lungs. A trail of glittering motes, less than specks of dust left her lips, and her eyes widened. Stardust. To look at it left her eyes aching and watering with the impossible shades of it.

The motes swirled, and one by one, disappeared into the flowing silver of the flute.

"Do be more careful what you breathe in, dear. This world is full of toxins," the Emerald Dancer cautioned.

"I will remember your advice." Ling Qi rubbed her throat. "That thing, what the Cloud Tribes call a star, the seven-colored sword, is it really…?"

She remembered the caldera well. It had been the first time she had seen sovereignty martialed for war. That thing that had hatched from the starstone had reacted in such a strange way to Renxiang. But was it really a star?

"You are a clever girl. You do not need more hints from me, not just yet," the spirit said kindly. "But there is another matter to speak of. There is a price."

"Oi, isn't it a little unfair to take stuff right outta someone's ring and start making stuff, only to charge 'em after?" Sixiang complained to her grandmother, straightening up.

Ling Qi didn't say anything. Unfairness was to be expected, but not this kind of unfairness, not from a spirit, not from her patron. Something else was being offered here.

"Oh my, yes, I would not be so rude." The Dancer raised her hands. The flute hovered above them, perfectly carved and balanced, its intricate filigree gleaming, and yet, the wood was rough and unpolished still. “You've provided no lacquer, despite having access to such a fine material…"

"The sap of Xiangmen serves my brother better than I," Ling Qi replied. Zhengui had been partaking carefully; a single drop the size of a pinhead was enough to flood his dantian and meridians with vital qi that took as long as a week to cultivate and process. "I would not deny him, nor do I think the qi of the heavenly pillar would be appropriate for a tool of Isolation and Want."

"Ah, the impenetrable spirit of a pillar of the world, inappropriate for isolation? Oh, dear girl, it was such power that is the basis of your newest teacher's prison."

Ling Qi hesitated then continued. "Nonetheless. My brother's growth is more important."

The sitting spirit nodded easily, rainbow shades passing through cheerily bouncing hair. A finger crooked again, and this time, it was but humble shards of splintered wood, soaked deep in her qi, which emerged: the remains of her old flute, itself remade from the broken mortal flute that had once been her mother's.

Ling Qi squeezed her eyes shut as they crumbled into dust, orbiting the flute, and felt the rush of memory, the longing with which she had gripped it for so long, and the desperation that never let her pawn it, even in her worst moments. She felt the pull on qi and memory alike and wheezed, falling forward and catching herself on her hands at the shore of the Delusion Throne.

The wood dust rained down gently, fusing with the wood of sacrifice.

"As you wish, but then, the price. It would pain me to give you such an unpolished piece, but I will not provide lacquer for free. As it is, it would serve you well in this realm, in the next, and beyond, but even that would end in time. And you greedy child will never let this go, will you?" Sister Brightsong laughed, then offered, "A drop of my blood or a drop of my brother’s would be more than enough to lacquer your instrument well. It would be enough to forge a talisman that will last you all the way to the end of your dream, wherever it takes you."

The Dancer’s black eyes had become gleaming silver.

The Dreaming Moon spoke through her avatar.

"But there must be a price to take such a talisman back to the waking world, beyond the gates of sleep," the spirit spoke cheerily. There was no frightening reverberation or crushing pressure, only a delirious whisper, a deep yearning that threatened to draw her into her own thoughts and trap her there forever to dance among the lotus flowers.

"What would it be?" Ling Qi whispered.

"A song, I think. You shall owe me a song, under a solstice sky where I hang low, when you have tasted war, here before my throne and all of my court. You shall perform for me a song composed of what war has done to you."

Ling Qi swallowed. Back in the outer sect, performing at a minor revel could have easily driven her mad. Attending the revelry of the Dreaming Moon herself before all of her component spirits would be even more dangerous. She would have some time, though, until a gibbous moon would occur on a solstice.

"That's a pretty big venue for a no-name, ya know," Sixiang said nervously.

"Is it? I see not an amateur. I see one who claims they will bring a new order unto heaven and earth, whose songs will move the masses of the world," the Moon said.

She was, wasn't she? Was it any different than submitting herself to the flame?

… Of course it was. That had never been anything but a threat of pain.

"You honor me, granting such an opportunity and calling it a price," Ling Qi said.

The Moon laughed, and Ling Qi felt her thoughts threaten to splinter, her perspective wavering through a thousand mirrored choices and paths that never were and dreams that could never be.

"I shall enjoy this. Choose then, little songstress. Blood of Nightmare or blood of Dream?"

Silence reigned for a beat, then a second, and a third. Ling Qi inhaled. The air was achingly sweet with the scent of flowers and wine, and it was only the rapid cycling of her qi that kept her from sinking into a drunken stupor from the qi soaking in through every pore and every breath.

The author of this story shares it on their own page. Because this site copied it, they can't see you as a reader.

"The blood of Ddream," she chose.

The subtle taste of blood beneath the sweetness washed out with her breath.

"I am going to war. Violence is not something I can reject, but it is not all, or even most, of what my song is. My music is more than death and endings. Revelry and joy, the delirium of riotous festival, should be reflected in my instrument. My flute is not a sword; it has a purpose as something other than a weapon."

She had promised Sixiang she wouldn't forget about art for its own sake.

"A weapon for other kinds of battles at least," Sixiang joked, bumping a shoulder against hers.

"True," Ling Qi said wistfully. "There are many, many kinds of conflict, and not all enemies are men and beasts."

Ideas were, she knew, dangerous enemies to fight indeed.

"Desire is the seed of madness at the heart of life, root of suffering, root of joy, the force which turns the wheel of the world, the terrible curse called Want." The avatar of the Dreaming Moon spoke with fond reverence, turning the flute over in her hands. Lights like silver fireflies swarmed around her where she sat at the center of the great lotus.

"The blessing called Creation."

The flute rose from her hands, levitating in the air, as the avatar theatrically swept a hand through her hair, coming out with a glittering silver pin pinched between her fingers. She swiftly transferred it to her thumb and forefinger and pressed it to the tip of an outstretched finger on her other hand.

The moment when the point pressed in seemed to slow time to a crawl. Pale, smooth skin dimpled under the pressure, coloring faintly, and then, the metal pierced divine flesh. Ling Qi's hands lay on the muddy shoreside from her earlier near collapse at the qi drawn from her channels. They clenched into a white-knuckled grip, sinking deep into the dark mud.

Madness. Song, sensation, catastrophic, infinite noise. Joy and despair and bliss and pain…

Sixiang embraced her, shaking like a leaf in a violent storm, parts of them dissolving at the edges as they both instinctively cycled their energies, twining them together, a web of memory and connection to keep their identities in and prevent their selves from popping like soap bubbles under the pressure of the Dreaming Moon's bottomless ocean of human expression.

A single drop of liquid silver bloomed from the pinprick, a million colors refracting from its surface as it bloated, shook, then stretched in a weighty droplet and fell. It splashed across the dark wood of the flute's body with a hiss like water touching white-hot metal,but it did not steam or boil. It spread across the dark grain and left in its wake a smooth matte finish of utter black, like the night sky at the depths of midnight. It left the filigree of moonsilver standing out clear and stark, its curling and branching patterns like swaying white branches, reaching for the stars.

The pressure threatening to burst her identity like a crushed berry abated, and Ling Qi let out a rattling wheeze as she sucked in a desperate breath of wine-scented air, unable to completely banish the tipsy feeling it left behind.

Sixiang groaned, slumping down beside her and rubbing their head, the wavering edges of their silhouette only slowly stabilizing.

"Ah, goodness, to have such eyes. I'm not often so filled with my greater self." The Emerald Dancer sighed. “A heady feeling, a drink so rarely cherished… Such fine work I do, when at my best. Its full power will be long beyond your reach, though I suggest you cultivate its mysteries well, little dreamer."

Ling Qi gave a shaky nod, pulling her hands free of the mud, a slight flex of qi sending it sliding off her skin. "I will not waste your blessing, Sister Brightsong."

Her voice was still a little slurred, as she was still ejecting the delirious lunar qi.

"See that you don't, although I admit, I would like you to see you try to break this one." The spirit laughed.

"She ain't gonna try, but she'll definitely end up putting it through its paces anyway," Sixiang joked.

Ling Qi sighed. Even with her head clearing, she couldn't say that the statements were wrong.

The flute was in her hands. It had not been tossed; she had not even felt the slightest twinge of motion or change in the air. It was simply in her hands.

It felt as impenetrable as the darkness between the stars to the casual brush of her senses. Contemplate its mysteries indeed. It was so heavy. The piece of firewood it had been made from had been heavy itself. Now, she wasn't sure she could have lifted it at all as a second realm.

"Does it have a name?" Ling Qi asked, respectful and reverent.

"Not like that gown of yours, and I doubt it will. It is too much bound up in you and I," Sister Brightsong said, tapping her chin with one fingertip. "Millennia Shattering Whisper, I call this piece, for the bright firefly who seeks to change the stars and the firmament, buzzing against the blackness."

Ling Qi swallowed. "I seek to bridge and speak, to bring my community and others into a harmony that may last, even if it is not eternal. My ambition is not…"

"And to do that, you will break the foundations of millennia. You will inspire a hundred heroes who will, if you succeed. Dear child, the path of multitude is always a path of discord. To bring a new harmony, the old harmony must be broken, the King of Forever made to bleed, as you carve it into a new shape." The words were almost gentle. "You know this, you understand this. Do not shy from it now."

Ling Qi closed her hand around her flute. It really was hers; the dimensions and feel were still achingly familiar, despite its weight and power. "I do. I understand it. A teacher's hands are not clean of a student's deeds."

Multitude, choice, could not become a tool for her to separate herself from consequences and could not devalue her own choices. She used the metaphor of bridges, but she was not merely seeking to be something for others to tread upon.

The waters under the lotus rippled. Prongs emerged, the bleached white of a skull, eerie green flames barely a pinprick smoldered in their sockets. They were not looking at her.

"Gramps," Sixiang greeted quietly.

"You have chosen suffering."

"I've chosen to live, yep. Once you've had a proper taste of that wine, you can't go back, just fading away with the morning," Sixiang answered. "I've still got a lot of stuff to work out, more to see and be. Even if the next little while is gonna be terrible, even if I don't get everything I want, there's still after."

"And if there is not?"

"Then, I don't regret living what I already have, pain and all."

"Fool. Drink then, and let the bitterness temper you."

"Sure, sure. You're an asshole, you know, Gramps?"

The Nightmare King was silent, and Ling Qi cast Sixiang an anxious look as they scooted right up to the shoreline and dipped their hands in the serene water, making not a ripple even as they lifted a handful of it from the lake beneath the Delusion Throne. She almost wanted to slap the water out of their hands, but Sixiang was making their own choice, and she had to trust them.

She felt her stomach drop as her friend drank, and their entire body frizzed like a bad illusion, color flickering out. Their whole body snapped and buzzed in erratic, sharp ways as qi surged violently. She felt the sea of their true self in her mind churning, white-capped waves crashing on the shore. And then, they were kneeling beside her again, strained and exhausted-looking, qi still roiling wildly.

"Ya weren't kidding about the bitterness," Sixiang croaked.

The skull in the water sank away from sight.

Ling Qi clapped her hands together once more, bowing to the throne. "We thank you for this audience, Dream of the Emerald Sea."