Threads 450-Cathedral of Winds 9

Ling Qi poured more and more qi into her constructs. The power of her domain flared out, filling the shadowed passageway with mist and darkness from which more ratscrawled, teeth chattering with endless hunger for the feast.

She strode forward through the water on platforms of ice. Picking a set of eyes in the mass of flesh, she fixed them with a look of challenge. She focused her thoughts. Her domain’s mist went black with the force of her intent

This was not their feast. Not their lair. They would lose. They would be driven forth. Go. Crawl in fear. Starve. Die in privation.

The passage rumbled, and Sixiang yelped as their construct was crushed against the wall. Tons of dead flesh surged forward, bubbling from her muse’s disruptive qi. It split down the center, and a vast maw full of teeth and barbed cilia greeted her. It slammed shut around her.

Jagged razor edges pressed into fabric and flesh with enough strength to crush stone and crumple metal. Acids and toxins stained Qiyi’s fabric. Grasping tendrils clutched at her limbs. Filthy impurity caked her from head to toe, choking off the expression of her arts the moment her qi left her channels.

“I really gotta be more specific when you’re making plans with me,” Sixiang grumbled.

She was glad Sixiang still trusted her. Could she ask for one more dance?

The muse grumbled again, but she felt hands materialize in her own. Sixiang’s phantom flesh was warmer than it had been before.

Ling Qi set her heel against the squirming floor, heel punching through to rock. Then, she began spinning through the first steps of dance she had learned, Sixiang’s hands held tight in hers.

The disrupted section of the veil left by Sixiang’s rippling qi shimmered and came apart, a hole briefly cut between realms, and the two of them danced through in a vortex of kaleidoscopic qi. Water, impurity, and liquified meat rushed into the gap they had left and spewed out into the formless ocean of color and thought which underlay the fantastical realms of Dream.

Sixiang gave her an unimpressed look as their dance carried them up and out of the gush of oily pollution they had brought with them. “That. Was. Gross.”

“But it worked,” Ling Qi replied.

Qiyi shook violently all across her body. Ling Qi winced at the gown’s distressed, keening wail in her mind.

“Extra soaps in your wash tonight,” Ling Qi promised.

Below, the flow was tapering, and the natural pressure between the material and physical realms closed the brief gap they had made.

She pushed her perception back through the veil and saw the crystal clear water rushing down the suddenly cleared tunnel, scouring the walls of impurity and boiling the fragments of severed tendrils that remained with a vengeance. The parasite itself was retreating, the creature’s panic and hurt palpable as it withdrew.

Ling Qi stepped back into reality, the sensation of Sixiang’s hands disappearing as they left the dream. She re-emerged into the icy water as a sizzling cloud of bubbling water, and…

A paper talisman inscribed with impurity wards was slapped across her face.

“So. I may have earned that.”

“You definitely earned that. What a ridiculous plan,” Li Suyin criticized as the crust of oily gunk was drawn away from Qiyi and into the sealing formation.

Bad wearer. No more gross meat bath. Listen to friends / fellow wearers.

Ling Qi was beset on all sides here.

“Effective. Enemy in retreat. Pursuit must be made.”

Stolen novel; please report.

Ling Qi huffed, letting the talisman do its work. Almost all side. At least someone agreed with her.

“The Piper can feel the parasite withdrawing on all fronts. The size of the loss just now shocked it. We have an opportunity to make for the breach now, if we know where it is.”

“Earthblood. Vault of frozen fire, crevice which once fed the soul of heat, now deadened.”

Li Suyin looked at her expectantly.