Threads 278-Sea of Dreams 2

“I think going downward through the tunnel will be the safer trip.”

“I wouldn’t call any of this safe,” Sixiang said dubiously.

“I said ‘safer,’ not safe. The storm above is wilder. I worry that we might get lost in it.”

“We party hard,” Kongyou quipped. “Think you’re a match for the shadows, but not the sky?”

“I’m confident I can keep my head around the kind of pain I see below,” Ling Qi shot back. Cold and desolate, the tunnel below oozed a crushing melancholy. It was dark and final, not the burning madness she felt from the other side of the mountain peak.

“The harsh storm and the windless calm both have their dangers.” Xuan Shi gave a slow shrug as he peered into the dark mouth of the tunnel. “This one does not much like the flame.”

“We’re decided then. Unless you have something to say, Zhengui?”

Her little brother peered past her, looking distrustfully at the vista ahead.

“I, Zhen, do not like any of this, but I will protect Big Sister no matter what in the dark or in the sky.”

She acknowledged him by lowering her head. She really did worry the ones closest to her, didn’t she? There were some parts of her character that she could not and would not change though. The open, endless blue sky was not her home—she loved the nest too much—but she would never stop flying.

There were no more words to be said. They advanced.

The bridge of ice she sang into existence arced downward, descending past the ash-choked mountain peak onto the winding switchback road of baked brick and stone which led into the yawning maw of the mine.

And it was a mine.

Abandoned tools lay strewn about in the dusty soil marked with blood. The pale supports of the mineshaft were no wood either, lacking any grain, but fused masses of human bones. The air ached of sorrow and endings and lives spent under uncaring eyes.

“Conquest,” Xuan Shi identified as they entered the darkness. Zhengui was the last one swallowed up by it, his eyes and the smoldering heat between his serpent scales casting the only light within. “A great and terrible spirit’s realm to tread upon the edges of.”

Kongyou sighed happily. “Foundational. One of the first. The great tragedy repeated forever and ever without end. Do you understand what you want to do, Shi? How… futile it is.”

Ling Qi remained silent as they walked, her effort focused on maintaining herself and the cold distance which kept these hungry walls from closing in. She diligently ignored the numberless whispers of misery that clawed at the edges of her mind.

“Oh, come off it,” Sixiang retorted. “This stuff is old, and yeah, we’re half made from it, but it’s not all there is. This isn’t inevitable.”

Garbled images bloomed in Ling Qi’s mind. Burning homes from shacks and yurts to great manors and grand traveling pavilions. Death raining from the sky, and death marching on the earth.

“No, you come off it,” Kongyou shot back. “We’re the beginning and the end. We always have been. When two people meet, one subjugates the other until only one dream is left. That’s us. Humanity’s dream.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” she found herself speaking in sync with Sixiang.

“Tch, you think you’re the first person who has thought of talking?” Kongyou hissed, contempt dripping off their words. “It doesn’t change the ending. People die. Maybe you remember them a little, living on in a food dish or a funny hat. They’re dead just the same.”

They walked. In the dark, men and women bearing hill tribe tattoos toiled in silence, their hands raw, their backs bent. Down in the dark, song and art and language died.

The Elder Huisheng had said that a cultivator could not kill an idea with a blade. Much crueler weapons were needed than that. Maybe there had been some virtue remaining to the old Weilu, that they had not been able to deploy such weapons.

“Hah! You’ve even got friends, don’tcha, who know better. That chick in the wolfskin robe, Alingge, and the good little soldier, Xia Lin, their cultures are shrinking, withering, and dying just the same. It’s taking longer, sure, but boy, did that metal lady speed up the process!”

Tribes died. Towns died. People died under arrows or blades, under lashes and chains, or under laws and boots. It was so very hard to keep it all out as she grimly kept the mine shaft they traveled down only that. Faces appeared and were pushed back into the walls, and desperate hands scraped at their ankles before the force of her will forced them back into the floor.wanting to live and breathe and be free. She struggled to stop the despairing earth from closing in, crushing them all in darkness.

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

But she would not give up herself or any of her companions to this nightmare.

“Kongyou,” Xuan Shi interrupted harshly. “There were five shoals once.”

“Aw, c’mon, Shi,” Kongyou whined. “You know that doesn’t change my point. Sure, sure, five peoples united, yadda yadda, but now, there’s one. One lived, and four died and gave the one some pretty bits to decorate themselves with, and that makes you. Well, most of ya anyway. And that’s not even getting into the two who didn’t join the singalong.”

“When many come together, it is not death.The heretic shoals were ended, and the five live, even as we grow beyond.”

“The end comes when you stop growing, Gui thinks. That is this, this breaking and burning until not even the seeds are left. Saying this is the same as something growing until it doesn’t look like the thing it started as is dumb.”