Threads 196-Liminal 5

She continued her descent, keeping her eye on the flicker of green that she had spotted. It helped to focus on a goal, rather than descending without purpose. It kept her thoughts running in the correct direction and her body reacting to her own commands rather than those of fragmented signals from fleeting alternate selves.

Forward. No turning. No retreating. That was the key.

When she came to the bottom of the stairs, it was abrupt. One moment, she had been placing a foot forward onto another dry stair. The next, her foot had sunk into swampy muck.

She beheld the sight of a low, wide cavern with a sense of creeping familiarity. It had been over a year since she had seen this place last, but she had seen it. Sluggish black water lapped at the muddy shore, and she remembered the treasures she had pulled from it: the shard of solid darkness from which her domain blade had been carved; the deathly mirror which sale had funded her cultivation for a year now; and the near forgotten seed pods still resting in her storage ring in the material world.

In the center was the horned skeleton wrapped in vines and covered in black flowers. It was still bleeding the liquid that filled the pool. Driven into the earth at its side was the same bronze spear she had seen before, but in the Dream, the spear flickered with a ghastly green radiance.

As she beheld it, she sucked in a breath when the bare skull twitched and rose to regard her with sockets full of black flower petals.

“I see you.” The voice that emitted from the skeleton dug into her mind with claws of icy cold, painful and ragged. Yet, through the pain, Ling Qi could feel no malice in those words. If anything, they seemed almost filled with wonder.

She felt a sharp pain in her chest then and felt something part her skin from within. She looked down to see the point of her domain blade pulling free, glistening and black. It shot from her chest, and it took everything she had to halt it middair, vibrating with tension. It felt like someone had just yanked on her arm hard enough to dislocate it.

“My blood, you will not come?” The worn whisper of the skeleton scratched at her ears. Its jaw didn’t move, and its voice seemed to be born from the rustle of petals and dried vines.

“Honored Elder, you are mistaken,” Ling Qi ground out through grit teeth, feeling the strain of holding her blade in place, humming in the air between them. “I only took the gifts freely offered. I am not your blood.”

Somehow, she could feel the futility of her effort. She could feel the strength of the skeleton. If it exerted itself just a little more, she knew it would have her blade.

“Liar.” Its voice was scolding but fond. “But what thief does not lie?”

Air shimmered in a veil of glittering color, and chaotic qi washed out over the room like a tidal wave as Sixiang materialized in front of her at full height. “Let her go,” the muse hissed, their expression strained.

She jerked back as the pressure on her domain blade loosened, but the grip was not wholly gone.

“How greedy,” whispered the skeleton, seemingly not angered by the interference. “You would deny a lonely elder their first company in an age?“

“If she doesn’t want to be here, you bet I do.” Sixiang’s words no longer came from their lips but rather on the sounds of an increasingly violent tide.

“Thank you, Sixiang,” Ling Qi said with a wince, laying a hand on the muse’s shoulder. “Honored Elder, unfortunately, I cannot stay. I have many obligations.”

“Young. So young. So much remains to be seen, to be taken,” the voice crooned. “Go, and come visit again. Bring with you your tales, and let us share as one thief to another.”

The grip vanished, and Ling Qi nearly stumbled, staring at the skeleton warily. “Why do you trust that I would come back?”

“Ling Qi, don’t question the thing,” Sixiang hissed in alarm.

Somehow, the thorny vines framing fleshless jaws seemed to convey a smile. “Curiosity. Want. Power.”

Ling Qi felt something like an impact against her stomach and a rushing sensation like flying at top speed. Her back slammed against wood, and cherry blossoms rained down. She found herself staring up at the boughs which surrounded her starting point. The dream idol floated soundlessly above the shimmering ring gates.

A familiar dark oaken door now stood at the edge of the clearing. It had no frame nor hinges, just a simple handle.

Ling Qi shut her eyes. “I think that’s enough for one session.”

***

The sights she had seen in the realm of Dream still filled her mind even now, well after she had passed back through the ring gates and packed both them and the idol away. She still saw the crumbling city ruins balanced so precariously, lives and experience piled high atop their predecessors’ until the oldest were but dust and sediment.

The bleeding mountain and the behemoth with Gui’s eyes stuck in her mind as well, mysteries she was itching to unravel. Then, there was that itching whisper.

Power and Want.

She couldn’t deny that those simple words compelled her. Divorced from the immediate fear of the moment, she was left to dwell on what she had felt down in that moldering prison. She felt a draw to that whispering skeleton, a deeply uncomfortable kinship. Somehow, she was certain that they were similar.

She couldn’t shake the feeling that he would be sad if she never returned. It was lonely to be a prisoner.

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

“I can’t feel anything influencing you, but he might just be better than me,” Sixiang answered her unspoken question.

Ling Qi acknowledged that. Then again, they had known exploring the liminal realm would be dangerous.

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” Sixiang agreed.

“Hey, Big Sis! Are you alright? You’ve been staring off into space since the wagon got moving.” Hanyi’s voice brought her out of her thoughts, and Ling Qi cracked her eyes open.