Threads 121-Reverb 2

As the core disciple overseeing the match raised his hand to signal the start, Ling Qi briefly reviewed her plan. Ling Qi had considered trying to beat Ji Rong at his game, rush him down, freeze and defeat him before he could build up a charge, but that was not what she had spent the month practicing. Playing at his game would allow him to dictate the pace.

The referee’s hand came down, and everything outside the field distorted as it expanded, putting hundreds of meters of distance between them. A trilling wintery melody rang out as her Singing Mist Blade materialized above her head, and the Mist spilled forth.

Across the field, thunder boomed, and a ring of inscribed discs appeared behind Ji Rong’s shoulders. His fists rose, static crackled in whitening hair, and his silhouette seemed to frizz and jump.

In the field between them, Ling Qi felt their domains clash. Both were still formless, nameless. The Mist spilled into the world and sang of winter’s hardship, but Ji Rong projected nothing outward.

He had become the lightning.

In that moment, she met his eyes and found commonality. Neither wind nor lightning could be caged. She would not be able to trap him with laughing revelers again.

Then he was in front of her, his fist outstretched, sparking knuckles nearly touching her nose. Ling Qi became the wind and scattered as the heavenly bolt crashed through her. In the boom of thunder, her laughter could be heard.

Even as her silhouette reformed, she heard glass shatter as his heels dug into the melted dirt and launched himself back at her.

This time, a palisade of writhing wood rose to stymie him, even as a young girl’s laughter mingled with a dragon’s roar.

As new grown wood blackened and bulged inward, Ling Qi used the moment bought and played the first notes of the Spring’s End Aria, calling upon the echoes of true winter. Hoarfrost spread across the ground, and icy mist trailed from the hems of her dress as she ghosted backward, carried on the wind, riding the shockwave of the explosion that tore through Zhengui’s barrier. When Ji Rong ripped through the wall, a battlecry on his lips, she met him with a Hoarfrost Refrain.

The screaming howl of a blizzard lashed him, and the scouring cold poured into his channels. Ji Rong, suspended in midair, shattered like fine glass, a great waterfall of sparks and static falling to earth amidst sparks of ice.

A fraction of a second later, she felt an impact on her cheek. From a scattered crackle of static, Ji Rong’s fist materialized, followed by the rest of him. Her head snapped to the side as heavenly power ripped through layers of defensive qi. The follow-up punch deflected off a ringing note in the air, and the third and fourth crashed through naught but air. The fifth struck her in the chest. Then, within her mind, Sixiang stirred, and chaotic qi rippled out, disrupting Ji Rong’s technique.

They flew apart to re-materialize on the ground. For a second time, their eyes met. Ling Qi’s cheek stung where his hit had landed, and frost clung to strands of Ji Rong’s hair.

Ling Qi smiled thinly behind her flute and flew backward toward Zhengui without turning, flaring her qi in a prearranged signal.

Her little brother was engaged with Ji Rong’s dragon, stabbing roots leaving scrapes and cuts across flying golden coils, but the moment that she gave the signal, he stopped, allowing the beam of liquid lightning that the young dragon spat to splash across his face to no effect.

Hanyi’s voice rose in song and drove Relong back with the voice of winter. She hopped from Zhengui’s shell onto a squirming root, following as he retreated. That was part of the plan. Ling Qi trusted Hanyi to handle the dragon.

Ling Qi had managed that situation perfectly well herself at that level after all. And unlike Heizui, Relong was at the same level as Hanyi rather than one stage above.

As Ji Rong cut through the air, hot on her trail, a massive quantity of qi flowed down through Zhengui’s legs and into the field below.

The earth roiled with life. Roots the size of entire saplings erupted, interposing themselves between her and Ji Rong. A flurry of fists tore apart a score, but a score more sprouted in their place. Ling Qi landed atop Zhengui’s shell, his volcanic heat only a pleasant warmth to her, and played a single ear-piercing note.

As Ling Qi knew from sparring with Wang Chao, even if something could not be stopped, it could be redirected. Ji Rong, rocketing toward her still despite the lashing and obstructing roots, was taken by surprise when an eagle screamed and talons seized his shoulders from behind, using his momentum to fling him across the battlefield above her. Amidst the grasping roots, the phantoms of beasts rose, and the song of her sword and the Mist girded their claws and fangs in frost.

She wondered briefly what she looked like to the audience, shrouded in mist standing atop Zhengui’s back and surrounded by a growing phantasmal army that stalked among root and branch.

Ji Rong landed with a thunderous boom at the end of his flight, and a crackling fan of lightning rippled outward, ripping apart the phantasmal eagle. He glared across the field at her, crackling static pouring down his limbs and blackening the grass as he crouched there.

Two of his nine discs were burning blue.

Then, he did something that surprised her.

His hand rose, two fingers extended. He stabbed them into his own chest, lightning-shrouded fingertips parting flesh like paper, and roared.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

It was not a sound which was meant to come from a human throat. Pebbles rattled and rose from the earth, and Ling Qi felt the wind vibrate and shake. Blinding lightning erupted outward in every direction from his position, and bolts fell from the clear sky. Reflexively, Ling Qi called on the Starless Shroud technique, and the bolts which fell upon her and her spirits vanished with nary a ripple.

Ling Qi focused through the lightning, eyes flickering silver, and she saw him. A tracery of curling red lines like tattoos marked his flesh, and the wound in his chest bled freely, a crimson line running down his chest. Sparks crackled around his fingers, and his eyes burned blue.

A third disc was burning.

Ji Rong flung his hand outward, and crimson droplets scattered, each holding a single catalyzing spark, and orbs of lightning the size of a man’s head bloomed in the sky. Beneath her, Zhen’s throat swelled as he spat a boiling mass of glass and magma.

It struck Ji Rong head on, but he erupted from it, bearing no more than scorched clothes and smoking skin.

A fourth disc burned.

Ji Rong charged, a roaring tail of lightning following him as if he were a comet.

Ling Qi leapt down from Zhengui’s shell, her dress trailing behind her limbs like ripples of the night sky, and called forth the memories of revelry, the last link she needed to complete her defenses. Around her, howling beasts rose onto their hind legs, snarls turned into callous laughter, and robes and intricate armor bloomed across fur and hide. Ling Qi felt the brush of a dream.