Threads 304 Identity 9

Sixiang brushed the surface of her thoughts, tentative, unwilling to reach any deeper as they were now.

“That’s nutty, Qi, not gonna lie. You don’t even know the guy’s whole story. And this, you ain’t got a technique for this.”

“You’re right. You’re completely right,” Ling Qi whispered back in the soundless nothing they occupied, the scattered cloud of being they had made of themselves to hide from the Nightmare. They were, for a moment at least, alone. “This is crazy, but I don’t want to take from you, and you don’t want to take from me. We don’t have to.”

Sixiang laughed quietly, the sound of chiming bells and wind rattling windows. “Like two kids in a coat trying to buy wine, huh?”

“I like to think it’s a little more dignified than that.”

“I bet you do.”

Sixiang’s grandfather stalked them in the white like a rotting sore in the fabric of dream,a mass of drooping flesh and far too many legs. One by one, the Nightmare ruthlessly hunted and unraveled the decoys she had made of her own self, scattered bundles of thoughts, the fragments of forgotten dreams, and idle fancies and anxieties, bundled up around cores of qi, just enough self to fool a searcher’s eye. Without any kind of refined technique, the method was terribly taxing. Ling Qi was not sure how much longer she could keep it up.

“Communication, exchange, these things do not negate dominion. They do not negate power. Tools and trinkets, useful but not transformative. To reject the imposition of will is to reject Sovereignty. Fine enough, but if that is your conclusion, then leave ambition behind, child, and seek not the heavens.”

The Brother Darksong’s multitude of voices hammered from every direction, scathing and scornful.

With Sixiang, Ling Qi reached with hands of spirit into her dantian, grasping the dense film of qi that had condensed in its depths she had stolen from a much greater being, wagered and taken in dishonest contest. Even all this time later, she’d not fully assimilated it. A lesson, or maybe a trap, Ling Qi could never be entirely sure. But thieves did not get to deal in certainties. The two them pulled the dense mass of darkness and wind up, swirling it around themselves in a cloak.

And the expanse of white shattered.

Before the Nightmare of the Emerald Seas, a long glittering mantle of green and black borne by a tall shadow blew in a phantom wind. A crescent smile, white teeth in the dark, beneath a half mask of liquid moonlight in the stylized shape of a hart. Twelve-pointed antlers of shadow and mist emerged from a swirling halo of starlit hair. In one hand, the shadow cradled a book of crumbling black leather, its pages split by a trailing crimson marker, and in the other, a jauntily held spear, its gleaming head leaned up upon a shoulder.

“Still a bully of children, O worm of minds,” said the thief. His voice was androgynous and layered, a smooth masculine bass over a young girl’s chime and a muse’s strident shout.

Brother Darksong paused. Tall as the thief was, the Nightmare bore down over him as a giant. The corpses hanging from his antlers let out a deep and keening wail.

“Charlatan. Failure. One whose essence has long passed. Your hanging cord longs yet for a throat. What idiot foolery and ruination do your rotting scraps seek?”

“I deal in only the finest of fools and foolishness, O worm of minds.” The thief chuckled, his fingers twitched and his ringed spear spun through the air, halting in low grip, its deadly tip leveled up at the Nightmare. “And you may only blame my kin for my freedom from the cord. They feared what even my worst singing voice could do. But now, if you’d not mind, I have a heart or two to steal.”

“You would stifle tribulation and stunt this student you cling to even now?”

“I will do nothing of the sort for I am only a mask and a shell of old and rotten memories, just as thee, if much more handsome. The girl has her answer, though she realized it not until this moment. She—I—we needed but a moment’s repose to think and a fool’s perspective to see.” The thief’s crescent grin widened, baring too many teeth, and eyes of winter ice burned behind a mask of silver. “False dilemma do you preach, O worm. Wills are imposed, power is wielded, but truth cannot be passed down from the lonely king, the bloodstained general, the austere artist, or the enlightened priest sitting alone. The sundering of Totality was no error to be repaired. Behold! We are multitude in all its hideousness and beauty!”

The jaws of the nightmare lashed out, faster than any eye could follow, and the thief turned on a heel. The screaming hurricane of the abomination’s passage sent his mantle aflutter. The dream churned as for the first time, the Nightmare Lord struck to kill, curdling and rotting thought and dream. The mundanity of the frozen forest shattered, becoming a nightmare of ruination and pain, a vision of hell, all the suffering of the world cast in endless refrain. Rusted chains and bloody lashes sought the thief, but his boots carried him through the nightmare in pirouettes and leaps, transforming bile and terror into clouds and soft white snow in his wake. His spear spun, vanquishing flame, shattering ice, and rending apart shackles.

“What words from failure and ruin. You, whose Way was broken, whose disciples were slaughtered, whose ideas were forgotten, and whose teaching brought about disunity, pain, and loss!”

Brother Darksong stalked the hell of the Emerald Seas’ failures. At his hooves sprouted burning blades, casting lurid light on empty trampled faces. At his head, a halo, a mandala of false hopes and broken dreams and a million, million ruined lives, bloomed. His body was a cloak of black tar, apathy and abandonment, mindless repetition of ritual, the termination of thought. In the eyes of the corpses, a pitiless radiance shone that could not stop.

“And yet, I am here,” said the thief. “I live, not as the Pure One for he, too, was wrong by degrees. My Way is unbroken because it is not mine alone to begin with. Old and dusty it might be, it merely awaits new feet. There is no virtue in stagnation, in fearing the lash, in seeking silence. Choice is pain. Choice is strife. Choice is disunity. Choice is life, the grand dream of the Nameless.”

And from the shadow, the true thief, the one which was not a mocking phantom, leapt over the Nightmare, catching the highest point on his antlers and swinging himself into the air. As he tumbled through the lurid sky, he landed upon the Nightmare’s back, cracking open the pages of his book. He [Spoke] the name written there.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

And Ling Qi was falling.

Amidst the shattered pieces of a sundered nightmare, she was falling.

She was hurt. Her dantian throbbed, though frantic cycling showed that it wasn’t cracked at least. A meridian had been seared shut, clogged and closed by the passage of Huisheng’s qi.

Bits and pieces of memory were left behind. She remembered dancing through a hellish landscape. She remembered speaking and being spoken to, her words of choice, totality, and multitude ringing out.

“I feel like I’ve been run over by Zhengui,” Sixiang complained.

Ling Qi’s eyes shot open, and she saw the muse, falling beside her. They looked wrung out, bruises spread all across their body. Their hair had regained its shade, though strands of silvery white now ran through it as well.

“You’re not the only one,” Ling Qi whispered. She tasted blood on her lips, and her voice cracked. Her throat felt terribly strained.

They fell through the sky of a shadowy forest whose roots and canopy alike were out of sight, her entrypoint into the dream. She reached out across the void of air between them. Sixiang clasped her hand.

“I’m sorry,” croaked the muse. “I’m so, so sorry. I understand if you want me out of your head.”

“Maybe for a little while. I think… I think we both need some space.”

“You’re probably right,” Sixiang said. “I love you, Qi.”