Threads 129-Convergence 7

The roaring of beasts and the sound of song drowned out all else.

Snarling beasts leapt, stalked and crawled over one another to get to the enemy. They were a veritable lake of fur and feathers and claws. Yet the shishigui was like an island in that lake, unmoved by the lapping of the waves.

That was starting to change. Ling Qi could feel it, a burgeoning warmth, the notes of her own melodies growing stronger and more pronounced, their volume rising. Below her, Ruan Shen strummed his instrument, and a second lute whirled wildly around him, playing itself, a one person duet.

From their supporters, twin flying swords, one carved of rock and the other of steel, shot out and were parried by whips of filth, carving sizzling arcs through the air. Yet as the armored creature strode forward, a shadowy beast, eyes aglow with the light of spring, lashed out and scored a line across scorched armor with its claws.

Above her, Cai Renxiang’s star blazed, and Ling Qi felt her dantian burn. Power rushed through her meridians, and she felt light surge through her. She knew at this moment that she looked like no more than a wraith of liquid shadow outlined by burning light. She sang the Hoarfrost Refrain, and the creature slid back on the frosted stone, patches of flesh on its crossed arms blackening from the cold.

Roots lit by incandescent green light from within erupted from the caldera wall overhead, and the barbarians nearly crashed headlong as they tried to gain altitude and instead met the same harsh refrain from a younger voice and missiles of stone and steel.

Despite Cai Renxiang’s scouring light, the air darkened and putrefied. Black droplets sizzled and boiled under the radiance but did not evaporate. It burned Ling Qi’s lungs with every breath, it sapped her qi, and it left her skin itching. She heard the fan-wielding girl below her cough, and her breath emerged as a mist of red.

Whips of frothing filth put all other thoughts from her mind. Even as she sang her Hoarfrost Refrain, she was spinning in midair, dodging to avoid their touch. The lashes had split, two becoming four, becoming eight, becoming sixteen. Ling Qi bit back a scream as one carved across her back, its acid touch dissolving every defence to leave a line of blistered skin and tattered silk.

Everyone scattered to avoid the lashing tendrils. Ruan Shen scooped up the coughing girl under one arm and vanished in a burst of flower petals, and the young man wielding twin swords shielded himself beneath a dome of stone that burned with Cai’s light. Zhengui rumbled and endured, volcanic ash already drifting from his shell.

Hanyi fell, her song dissolving into a scream as a whip carved through the mass of snowflakes she had dissolved into. Hanyi rematerialized in an instant, clutching her neck where an ugly black welt stretched across her throat.

The caldera shook with the stamping of paws and hooves, and the air vibrated with roars and brays of reveling beasts, a hundred voices raised not in cheer but demand. Ling Qi’s song rose into the shriek of a blizzard, rising until it became the silence of the End.

The shishigui vanished in an explosion of snow and rime as every droplet of moisture within a dozen meters flash froze. The cloud of snow exploded outward. Steam rose from a rippling armor of liquid filth that wrapped around the creature like a second skin. Chunks flaked off from it into mounds of filthy slush, revealing unharmed armor and flesh.

Cai Renxiang fell upon him even as he raised a hand toward her. Ruan Shen’s melody rose to crescendo, and Cai Renxiang’s colorless radiance blazed like a second sun. Liming’s spiritual shriek reached such volume that Ling Qi felt her ears ring, and as Cifeng’s edge met the beast’s upraised bracer, the floor of the caldera shattered, and the ground beneath the creature’s feet sank downward three full meters.

Deep in the smoke and dust, Ling Qi heard a thump as a single armored claw fell to the ground.

Another beat of silence ensued as the smoke cleared and revealed the shishigui, his right arm severed halfway to the elbow, black blood pouring from his stump. Cai Renxiang hovered overhead, sword already rising again. Ruan Shen and the others stood at the rim of the crater to her right, and on her left, Zhengui hunkered down surrounded by a writhing rampart of wood, Zhen curled protectively around Hanyi.

Above, only the barbarian musician remained, battling a half-dozen disciples, who leaped and fought from the platforms of wood that Zhengui had summoned from the caldera walls.

It was at that point that the sky tore open.

Despite the danger, despite the anger and adrenaline and everything else, Ling Qi found her attention dragged upward to the clear blue sky above the raggedly torn clouds. The stars were falling. Ten thousand burning lights lit the sky and drowned out the sun. Her senses burned at the raw power born above her, each one fit to shake mountains and obliterate towns. The pressure that fell upon her, seeking to crush them all to the ground, was so much worse than that day in the New Year’s Tournament, the will of a greater cultivator to kill far surpassing the power unleashed in a spar. The stars fell, and in that moment, Ling Qi knew fear.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

She could not escape the light that would cleanse the mountain.

She could not endure the burning heat of the sun.

She could not protect even a single thing.