threads 127-Convergence 5

The most effective thing Ling Qi could do would be to keep the barbarians’ attention until the reinforcements arrived while Cai Renxiang duelled the shishigui envoy. Ling Qi’s eyes flicked upward to where the barbarian musician was turning, reorienting on Cai Renxiang as her saber met a fluid whip of impurity with the screaming hiss of a blazing coal being dropped into cold water.

In the cacophony of the ongoing battle, he didn’t react to the scream of one more eagle. It was a mistake.

The notes of the man’s song stumbled over one another as phantasmal talons seized him and his mount and flung him toward Ling Qi and her spirits. Ling Qi was already dancing backward, a wordless pull on her connection to her spirits urging them to retreat with her toward the starstone. All around her, bestial phantoms rose among and from the dancers of the revel, girt in rime and frost. Her gathering host yowled a challenge as they gathered around the stone, although at a distance as those that drew too close broke down into shimmering lights and motes of frost. Above her, the song of her sword rang out, and another barbarian was lost in the depths of the Mist.

For a moment, the challenge rang unopposed in the caldera as Ling Qi landed lightly beside her little brother.

Then the response came.

From above, a renewed song clashed with her Mist, wresting her victims from its grasp. Three bowstrings sounded, and three lightning bolts fell, stakes of snapping electricity slamming into the ground around her, forming a perfect triangle as lightning arced from one to the next. Electrical current roared out, spilling to fill the whole of the area, and Ling Qi raised her hand. Three bells chimed as the lightning arced into her hand, her Three Moons Chime drinking in the field of lightning before it could finish coalescing.

Dozens of screaming and slicing arrows flew wild, striking phantoms and shadows, and Ling Qi wove between dozens more as they fell upon her through sheer chance, a frantic spinning dance made all the more desperate by the gathering power from across the cavern.

There was a crash and muffled boom as the fourth realm barbarian slammed Guan Zhi, grasped in his eagle’s talons, against the caldera wall. Rock cracked and splintered, letting in light as her commander was plowed through meters of volcanic stone.

The cry of her phantom eagle was drowned out by the furious screams of seven real eagles, and at her feet, powdered, sterile stone exploded into a cloud of chalky dust as the echoing noise shattered it into dust. Ling Qi felt a tightness in her ears, as if something was straining, ready to pop. Around her, phantoms wavered on the verge of breaking apart.

But her winter did not recede. A warmth in her chest burned, and phantoms snapped back into solidity. The power of the winter hearth refusing to be extinguished. Her next step carried her on the wind, and Ling Qi dissolved into whispers and shadow, slipping into the silent spaces between echoes to avoid the ear-splitting wall of sound.

But even through the shriek, she could still feel the hum of bowstrings.

Zhengui let out a challenging bellow as he stepped in front of Hanyi and Ling Qi both and bore the brunt of the volley. Two layers of roots and wood sprang up, only to be shattered in moments by screaming, slashing wind. His shell rocked as a dozen arrows and more battered into his side, and centimeter by centimeter, his four stout legs dug furrows in the chalky stone as he was pushed backward. The boxy spikes of his shell shook and crumbled, bits and pieces of bone breaking and scattering, leaving their smooth edges jagged.

The last missile struck the hardest, a spinning drilling missile of wind that howled like a thousand clashing blades fired from the bow of the strongest of the Twelve Stars’ retinue. It struck Zhengui’s shell dead on, and Zhengui skidded backward a full meter.

Zhengui’s shell was cracked on the side that had faced the barbarians, a dozen tiny fractures surrounding a great bleeding wound where the last arrow had struck with cracks radiating around it. Blazing blood like liquid magma dribbled to the floor in hissing, molten drops.

Ling Qi materialized in front of Zhengui, even as veins of green began to glow across his limbs and the ash in the air started to shimmer. The next arrow that flew struck her and vanished without a ripple, and so did the next. Hanyi joined her, her song of cold and winter stealing momentum from incoming attacks as the cracks in Zhengui’s shell healed ever so slowly.

To her right, Cai Renxiang was holding out well, the tendrils of light that formed her wings hissing and sizzling as they beat away droplets of impurity. Several glowing scars marked the shishigui envoy’s armor, but in turn, droplets of corruption stained Renxiang’s luminosity, dimming her light where blackened droplets marked her, each one seeming to vibrate as they struggled to expand against her purifying light.

But they weren’t being cleansed. They were only being contained, and Cai Renxiang was being pushed back.

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