Threads 234-Thunder 5

“That cocky ass!” Yu Nuan reacted an instant after Ling Qi. Qiu let out a booming bark as she swung back onto his back and took off after the pair of spirit brothers.

<Not even a thought for the easy way,> Sixiang thought.

Of course, Ling Qi thought back. This was a game after all. The easy way would be boring. She grasped the wind and flew like an arrow shot from a bow.

The two spirits had a lead on them, and already, they were barely a receding dot in the mist, trailing a cloud of stray pages and toppling shelves in their wake. But neither Ling Qi nor Yu Nuan were slow. A heavy slam sounded as the sealed shelf fell over behind them, the sound barely catching up to Ling Qi’s ears as she bent the air to clear her path.

Yu Nuan bounded behind, Qiu dashing through the air almost as fast as Ling Qi herself. They erupted from the library in a churning whirlwind, leaving behind chaos and the indignant squawk of the library keeper carrying after them. Ling Qi banked hard, spiraling down the corridor after the thieving brothers.

On the wall beside her, Yu Nuan’s hand struck down across the strings of her lute in a spray of electrical sparks, and the air distorted under a shockwave of raw noise, rushing down the hall, filling the entire passage with its cacophony.

The lightning winged brother, trailing behind with the glittering snare and scroll in his hand, jerked in midair, briefly slowing down. That was enough for Ling Qi to close, halving the distance between. A low, melancholy strand of notes peeled out, and black metal flashed as her domain weapon emerged, spilling mist and fog down the passage like an onrushing flood.

There was a screech of alarm as it engulfed the rearmost brother, and the other spun around, two rustling fans made of long pure white feathers in his hands. He swept them down in a crossed arc, and a gale roared down the passage. Ling Qi went tumbling from the force, but her mist did not.

In the twisted, open air labyrinth of her domain, the clash was on. Qiu’s loud bay rocked the passage, echoing and echoing until it seemed a whole pack of hounds were circling their prey, eyes like glinting sparks in Ling Qi’s mist. A useful combo, Ling Qi thought, if she could control her phantoms better.

Yun Long, the spirit with the scroll in the snare, spun to face her, electric wings snapping and hissing in the dense mist and threw out his free hand. The mist around him thickened as he wrenched a part free of her by its moisture, and Ling Qi found herself assailed by a storm of horizontally falling rain, each droplet striking with great force. Ling Qi fell back at first, driven by the relentless water pressure but then, with intent.

Yu Nuan bounded in on Qiu’s back, already strumming a meter tense and angry, backed by the basso baying of the phantom hounds in the mist.The bolt of lightning that swept down struck Yun Sho, the fan-wielding spirit head-on as he spun, summoning up a whirling miniature tornado with himself in the center to catch the bulk of it.

Chaos.

Mist and wind and lightning churned in the halls of the thunder palace. Ling Qi ghosted close, and Yun Long scattered into sparks, a dozen blinking afterimages in the mist. Yu Nuan played a harsh chord, forging bars and chains of fire and lightning. Yun Sho dissolved into moisture and fled. Thunder crashed, lightning struck, and laughter rang out.

Wind grasped at the edges of the wriggling parchment clasped in the snare, and the spirit holding it laughed aloud, the beat of his electric wings creating shockwaves of disorienting thunder. Ling Qi turned her wild tumble into a graceful swoop midair, coming back around for another pass.

She saw Yun Long grin at her as he twisted his hand and sent the prize, snare and all, somewhere else, vanishing from sight. She felt his brother, Yun Sho, gathering qi and the growing distortion in her mist as he grappled with Yu Nuan and Qiu, weathering the lashing tongues of flame from the inhumanely rapid solo that emerged from the lute in her hands.

Ling Qi’s eyes narrowed. She recognized an escape about to happen. Maybe she could stop it, but…

Why not take a gamble?

Her eyes flashed silver. Ling Qi felt the flows of qi through her own mist, saw the shape of Sixiang’s grasping “hands,” and the rigid razor-thin circles of qi pulsing outward from Yu Nuan’s lute. She saw the gathering energy of Yun Sho, like a wedge, building toward a horizontal thermal which would drive her mist apart and carry them away.

But most importantly, she saw the glowing knot of spatial and dream qi gathered around. She’d already done it partially once. Why not give it a try for real and Open the Vault?

The wind started to scream, her mist being channeled away in a narrow passage, and Ling Qi reached out a hand. Her fingers peeled away, and her hand dissolved into smoke and shadow and wind and mischievous dreams. The brothers laughed as they began to be carried away. And Ling Qi reached out not into the realm of dreams, but between the physical and the spiritual, and felt her fingers brush over a jumble of items.

And then the brothers were gone, just an echo on the wind.

Yu Nuan cursed, her hair and sleeves dangling awkwardly where she grasped onto Qiu, while the hound stood panting on the ceiling. “Ugh, hold on a sec. I managed to knock some feathers loose. We can track them and—”

“We don’t need to.” Ling Qi drifted back to the center of the hall, her mist dispersing.

“I don’t think we’re getting back into the library.” Yu Nuan gave her a surprised look.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“We don’t need to do that either.” Ling Qi shook her head. With a wave of her hand, she revealed a struggling scroll and a snare of diamond thread.

“Oh, Moons, that guy’s gonna be embarrassed.” Sixiang snickered.

“I saw him dismiss it though,” Yu Nuan said, bewildered as Qiu leapt down, righting her in midair with a happy bark. “When did you…?”

Ling Qi allowed herself a swell of pride as the girl’s eyebrows rose in realization. “I did say these games were good practice.”

“Congrats then,” Yu Nuan said. “Did you grab just that or…?” She trailed off, perhaps not wanting to imply that Ling Qi would shamelessly steal more than what was hers.

“Naturally, I snatched everything I could in the moment I had.”

It wasn’t a lot, just a bunch of odds and ends, leaves and twigs and stones with varying levels of qi. Reagents, perhaps.