Threads 186-Return 5

Ling Qi glanced from the grinning nightmare to Xuan Shi.

“It feels nice to be believed in,” Kongyou drawled, clasping their hands. They glanced at Ling Qi and Sixiang with a smirk. “Isn’t friendship grand?”

“What do you think you’re up to?” Sixiang demanded, glaring at Kongyou.

“Same thing as you, cuz. Enjoying my human,” Kongyou said flippantly.

Ling Qi raised her hand in a sharp gesture before Sixiang could respond. She never took her narrowed gaze away from Kongyou. “The Esteemed Elder already chided us once for whispering. It would be very rude to force him to do so again.”

She heard Sixiang shift behind her, and she could nearly feel the glare still being sent over her shoulder. “Later, then,” Sixiang ground out.

Kongyou’s sharp-toothed smirk didn’t waver, but their glittering black eyes narrowed. It passed in barely a moment, and then, the nightmare shrugged, brushing a hand through their hair as they turned to Xuan Shi. ”Aw, well, if you’re gonna be boring, that’s fine. Pretty sure he just meant interrupting my Shi though.”

Ling Qi’s eyebrow twitched, and her scowl deepened. Every word that emerged from the nightmare’s mouth filled her with a deep irritation. There was nothing in them that she could point to as wrong, no deception that she could articulate, and there wasn’t even any particular mockery in their tone. But to Ling Qi, their insincerity dripped and oozed, rankling her as much as if spittle were dripping down her face.

She turned her eyes resolutely back toward Xuan Shi, ignoring the sidelong smirk the moth-like spirit gave her.

“Honored Elder,” Xuan Shi began, “this one is a fool in many ways, it is true. Deride as you like, and this one shall accept thy words as true. But please, thy companion’s work has been most important, and only thine memory holds answers.”

“You are a demanding child. I will ignore your idiocy with that creature since it is no business of mine. But I have answered your question. You dare say that you are unsatisfied with that?” The sword’s grinding voice made Ling Qi wince, feeling a sharp pain in her inner ear. Under her breath, she began to hum, channeling qi through the Bastion’s Melody technique of the Melodies of the Spirit Seekers’ art to lighten the painful pressure of the spirit’s presence.

Xuan Shi’s grip on his staff tightened, the wood groaning under his grip. “Yes. This matter is of too much import to accept such an answer, even from thee.”

“Do you fancy yourself a writer?” The sword harrumphed. “Less foolish than the road of a swordsman, but a hopeless path all the same. This Empire cares not for such things, but perhaps your clan means that you can afford to be idle, child of the Scholar Kings.”

“This one does not yet know his path,” Xuan Shi said. “Where the current flows, these eyes cannot see. Where the wind blows, these ears cannot hear. All the same, thy companion’s work has been dear to this one’s heart for many of the few years this one has had. I beg you to treat this seriously.”

In response, there was only the soft and eerie sound of wind passing between the tightly packed trees that ringed the grave.

“I was not lying or dismissing you,” the sword finally said. The anger was gone from its voice, replaced with a weary exhaustion. “Keung sailed the northern sea under the flag of Jin for most of his life. Exploration is no romantic thing. You meet new people, and then, you kill them and take their things or otherwise arrange to exploit them. If they are too strong, you watch your captain seek weakness with which to divide and ruin them until you can. That is the soul of the explorer. Over centuries, a young soldier who sought the horizon became a bloody sword wielded by captains and then admirals. How many isles and small peoples litter the ocean far from any greater shore? I do not know, but there are less now than there were before.”

She could see Xuan Shi’s shoulders sinking, but he didn’t look away from the sword.

“It is not merely the Jin either,” the sword spoke morosely. “I have seen your kin devour entire isles in the northern sea, and I have seen them devoured in turn when the sea folk can manage vengeance. The three peoples of the Sea Dragon God’s court are not so different as they like to pretend. You wish to know the genesis of Lang Keung’s childish scribblings? They are the dreams of a man whose Sovereignty had crumbled because he chose to shatter his own edge rather than take one more life.”

Xuan Shi’s staff scraped against the dirt. “Good dreams they were and are. There is no shame in that.”

“I will not chide you for that. They were good dreams. But they were nothing more. In the end, we still died as killers and were slain as killers. Swords can only be swords. Not one thing has changed.”

Ling Qi felt a shiver down the back of her spine as the atmosphere of the grave grew heavier still, mist and wind leaving Xuan Shi as only a dim silhouette. She felt cold and tired. Was this how others felt in her mist? Ling Qi felt Sixiang grasp her hand and squeezed it in turn.

Beside them, Kongyou swayed from foot to foot, looking pensive.

As the air grew colder still, the whisper of the wind resolved into something more, the echo of a memory imprinted on the world.

“It was a fine thing while it lasted. Wasn’t it, my friend?” A wistful voice, scratchy with age and sorrow, whispered. In the mist, there was a shadow of a long beard and a heavily lined face, dripping wet from the downpour that turned the garden they had worked so hard for under their feet to mush and mud. “I’m sorry to take your peace from you.”

The simple bent walking stick in his hand trembled, and a more familiar voice spoke on the wind. “The dream has been good. I would have liked to die peacefully by your bedside, but we both know that such could never be.”

“You’ve always been a pessimist, [——].” The old man chuckled, running his thumb along a knot in the wood.

“You’ve always been a fool, Keung,” whispered the sword. “It has been good to pretend, but the time is over. Look to the sky where foes gather. Look behind where your children and disciples flee. Only violence remains.”

“Do you think I have made any difference at all with those youngsters?” the old man asked, gazing up into the sky.

“To tell, they must live,” whispered the sword. Worn and gnarled wood unraveled, revealing a lacquered scabbard and a plain hilt bound shut by a ribbon of white.

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The snap of cloth echoed in the ruined garden and drowned under the hiss of a drawn blade.

“No, nothing has changed at all,” ground out the voice of the broken sword, scattering the mist. “Does that satisfy your curiosity?”

After a long moment, Xuan Shi bent his back in a low bow. “This disciple thanks the Honored Elder for taking his childish question seriously. But…”

“But? But? You vexing child, what more do you want?” the sword demanded.

“While this one cannot answer the question of whether thy companion made a difference to his disciples, he made a difference to this one. Dreams and stories may be childish, but ‘should’ is greater than ‘is.’ To seek the horizon is not foolish, even if one should never reach it.”

Ling Qi toyed with the end of her sleeves. In the end, it was the same dilemma that kept her from fully believing in Cai Renxiang’s vision. The sword was right. Violence would never stop being needed. The world was violent, and struggle was built into its bones.

But there was more to it than that. Xuan Shi was also right, flowery as his speech was. It wasn’t wrong to seek something better. She caught movement to her left then, and with a glare, she blew a gust of air into Kongyou’s mouth, causing them to cough and sputter instead of speak.