Threads 300 Identity 5

The air around them darkened, and she saw Sixiang stiffen, something cold and cruel and alien seeping into their eyes. The threads dug into her wrist, and the binding grew tighter.

She’d known the problem coming here. Despite her deflection, despite her evasion, and despite her avoidance of the subject, Ling Qi knew the root of the problem. The problem was that her conception of intimacy was wrong. She was too grasping and too afraid all at once.

To see past her misconception, and to make herself accept that she was wrong…… That had to be the solution. Ling Qi loosened her grip on Sixiang’s hand, and their hands came apart.

The pain remained, and the threads under their skin spooled out into the gap that formed.

Ling Qi breathed out and looked up to see Sixiang standing there, looking down at their hands. The muse’s lank, colorless hair hid their face.

“Sixiang. I know—”

“Why d’you always gotta be like this?”

She stopped mid-sentence at the interruption. The greater nightmare was silent.

“You can stand up to anything outside, but the moment you look in, you run away,” Sixiang criticized harshly. “You always assume you’re bad. That you’re greedy, and selfish, and all that other crap. It’s great that you didn’t end up like that big icicle or that starving carpet-to-be. But I am so damn sick of you trashing yourself!”

“Sixiang, I don’t want to control you. I know you don’t want to control me either. We can’t accept the way your grandfather is trying to frame this,” Ling Qi placated, glancing nervously around. “Besides, I’m not that bad. I know my fears, but our relationship isn’t—”

“Ain’t it?” Sixiang snapped. They raised their head, and Ling Qi startled at the sight. Sixiang’s dark eyes weren’t polluted by another entity’s presence. Their features seemed harder, sharper than usual, but… they were Sixiang.

“You ever think that I don’t want more distance, huh?” Sixiang continued. “And don’t tell me you don’t control me. How much do I do? All this boring, awful gruntwork you put on me, and I do it. I do it for you! I keep my cool. I don’t go out and pester people or play any pranks, even when I figured out how to without a body! I hung around even after it started to hurt. I’ve been changing myself for you all along! And yeah, I have my hooks in you too cause that’s how it works.”

“That’s not the same thing,” Ling Qi protested. “What he’s showing us is awful and wrong.”

Sixiang snorted. “He’s making it look all scary and gross because of course he is. And that’s enough for you because you think of it like that! You make so many excuses for why your boss doesn’t count, despite all the power she has over you if she wanted to exercise it. You reason out why you can be fine in that Sect or your Empire. But me, I gotta keep quiet and be nice and unthreatening and never let on how much I love—”

As Sixiang spoke, getting more and more worked up, they reached for her hand. The strings tugged, tightened, and grew thicker and more sturdy. Ling Qi’s eyes widened. She jerked her hand back. The strings didn’t tear, but they strained.

“—you!”

Sixiang’s last word echoed in the hall as their hand fell back to their side. They chuckled.

“And that’s all it takes for the fear, huh? Poor turtle boy. Thought it’d be different for me, but you really can’t accept that someone might want you instead of the other way around.What exactly is so bad about being held tight, if that’s what you want?”

“So decided, two tribulations apart.”

That awful voice seeped out of the air again, and the hall came apart. Black leaves blew in, a dense cloud of moldy, rotting vegetation, swiftly obscuring her vision. The distance between her and Sixiang expanded violently. She lunged forward, grabbing for Sixiang’s hand, but this time, the muse didn’t reach back.

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A roaring wind took her, burying her in rotting leaves.

When Ling Qi next opened her eyes, she lay on the ground, staring up at a gray smoke-filled sky. She felt the crunch of dead leaves under her head and back. She sat up.

It was a cold fall day, and all around her were corpses and fires. Men and women in ill-fitting armor were scattered across the ground like discarded leaves, staring with empty eyes up at the sky. They were corpses that still breathed.

This was her work, the audience for the Traveler’s End.

Ling Qi sucked in a breath as she forced herself to stand, not letting her eyes meet any of the dead bandits’ mindless gazes.