Threads 126-Convergeance 4

This was a mistake.

For the hundredth time since Ling Qi had begun reporting back, the thought flitted through her mind, a stray thread in the loom. Continuing this operation in its current form was the incorrect choice. That was not to say that seeds of alliance being planted should be allowed to grow, that their enemies should return home unmolested, new resources in hand.

It was said that in the opening salvo of Ogodei’s war, a single iridescent arrow from beyond the horizon had pierced the millenia old mountain fastness of Black Lotus Peak and struck Patriarch Li through the middle dantian in his own meditation chambers. Enemies of the Empire could not be allowed such weapons. But this was the wrong way to go about it, and not all here were enemies just yet by her measure. Nor could she see any path from this that would weaken their enemy’s suit for allies. This was a hammer being applied to a half painted canvas. But her opinion was not yet relevant in the grand scheme of things.

Her gaze flicked to the disciples far below where she stood in the sky. Her objection had been logged, and it had been dismissed. The elders involved in the operation had relayed the order to proceed. Cai Renxiang felt a spark of anger, incandescent in its unfamiliarity. Was this a shadow of what Mother had felt before her ascent when the warning bought with Grandfather’s blood was ignored in the court of the Hui?

A childish comparison, perhaps. The situations were not even close in severity.

“Prepare to fire,” the communications disciple said crisply, his earlier babbling gone. Power from a dozen disciples washed over her, bolstering the flow of her qi. She saw through Ling Qi’s eyes and beheld her target.

Cai Renxiang’s misgivings wrought no hesitation. Whatever her thoughts, she did not intend to leave Ling Qi unsupported. Cifeng’s sheath unspooled, shimmering thread revealing reflective steel, and in her hand, the blade purred.

Around her, rain evaporated, shredding into its component motes of qi as her Light burned. It spilled from her pores, casting the valley below in harsh light. Radiance spilled from her eyes, and mortal vision faded away, revealing the pattern that lay beneath, infinite in complexity and beyond all but the meanest comprehension by a mind as young as hers.

In the layer below conscious thought, Liming’s presence bubbled up. The whispers of her gown were not words; they never were. They were animal things, urging animal acts. They were rage and passion and the desire to act. The desire to break and remake.

From the spool of power that lay beyond her reach, Cai Renxiang pulled, and Liming howled in rage, hurling itself against her control, tearing at her mind, seeking to seize her limbs as she took its power into herself, drawing more than she ever had before. She felt her very bones vibrating under the power she drew, and she knew that her face had vanished into featureless incandescence. She had advanced since that day in the swamps.

The mastered Judgement of the Broken World could not be used with her own piddling power.

Her limbs trembled under Liming’s assault as the radiance bloomed outward, bleaching stones and plants hundreds of meters below. Cai Renxiang raised Cifeng in a two-handed grip above her head, the blade replaced by a bar of empyrean light, too bright for even immortal eyes to look upon.

Cifeng sang as Liming’s threads were severed, and resistance ceased.

Radiance fell.

***

Trepidation touched Ling Qi’s thoughts as she considered her targets. This was, she knew, going to be dangerous. Around her were arrayed so many powerful cultivators. This would not be a battle where she would be able to simply shrug off everything hurled her way. It didn’t help that there was still that niggling doubt in her head, wondering if this was a good idea at all.

But the stunned silence that had followed the shishigui’s offer was fading. The fourth realm barbarian was leaning forward in his saddle, and she could feel the sparks of qi beginning to burn in his eyes and ears, presumably checking to see if the sight before him was an illusion.

She was out of time.

Ling Qi fixed the fourth realm tribesman and the beetle-armored shishigui in her eyes and felt the communications disciple’s technique take hold, sending what she saw down to the smallest mote of dust to her allies.

The fourth realm’s eagle screamed a deafening warning.

The storm clouds overhead blew apart in a wide circle around the black sphere that fell. A perfect marble of blackness, thunder boomed and contrails of broken air trailed its path. Overhead, barbarians screamed in alarm as they were yanked upward like puppets on strings, barely able to cling to their mounts. Chunks of the caldera rim were ripped loose, rocketing into the air and smashing into the bodies of men and beasts similarly dragged.

On the opposite side of the Caldera, a mathematically perfect circle of the clouds evaporated under a pillar of incandescent light wide enough to swallow a city block. Three unlucky barbarians circling overhead vanished as the light touched them, seared away beyond even ash at its merest touch.

An eagle’s wings flared, and the wind rose with a roar. A long, spindly arm clad in chitin seized the young musician standing beside its owner and yanked the man and mount alike against the shishigui’s narrow chest.

The black sphere struck the fourth realm’s upraised sword, and men screamed as the caldera shook and stone crumbled, bodies and objects dragged violently toward the epicenter. In contrast, the light fell upon the stone with eerie quiet, swallowing the screams of those beneath it.

Ling Qi was already moving, her own role decided. She didn’t wholly understand the danger of this starstone, but she knew enough. A hundred ideas flickered through her head as she descended into the chaos of the caldera. She needed to make sure it couldn’t simply be pulled back into the earth as easily as it had been raised. She saw the way it warped qi at a mere touch, a virulent ooze forming around its bottom. But it was still resting there on the ground, was it not? In some way at least, it still obeyed the Law of Earth.

Her eyes flicked toward the side of the caldera bleached by Cai Renxiang’s light, already fading into twinkling stars, and an idea was born. A moment of silent communication passed between her and Zhengui, and she released her spirits.

There was a muffled sound of displaced air as Zhengui appeared in midair, falling with the force of a meteor toward the center of the cavern, Hanyi clinging to his back. Cold stone warmed to heat as stones were made to remember their fire, and the ground rocked as a plume of lava roared forth, launching the starstone into the air.

Ling Qi materialized beside it and sang the grinding melody of winter, and the force of a glacier slammed against the slowly spinning, airborne stone. It flew downward as if flung from a catapult into the fading curtain of sparkling light from Cai Renxiang’s attack. She saw the stone there bleached a perfect pearly white. There were two ashen shadows where the two attendant shishigui had been and four barbarians gathered together on their horses. Horrid burns marked the beasts’ flanks, and she could see exposed muscle where fur and skin had burned away. Their riders were hardly better, their armor in tatters and their skin covered in burns.

The starstone crashed into the middle of them, and the barbarians scattered like pins, but one was too slow. An ugly crunch and a hideous sizzling ensued as the starstone struck him. Ling Qi did not look at what remained when the starstone rolled ponderously away across the scoured ground.

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It was only then that she was able to get a proper look at the battlefield. Zhengui was in the center, roots already bursting from the ground beneath his feet. She soared just above him, and Hanyi clung to his back, hiding in the shadow of a shell spike.