Threads Chapter 449-Cathedral of Winds 8

Good enough. She wondered at her new appellation though. It was the second time she had been referred to as “Attuner.”

They had no more time for chit chat. The enemy was coming.

It came first as a subtle, dark particulate in the water, like silt or mud, barely perceptible as different. It was a creeping poison to be taken in without notice.

Ling Qi sang, and glittering scales filled the waters around her. Schooling carp shot out once again, but in a twist of fancy, the rushing chord of the River King was sped up, spontaneously rewoven. Eyes glittered with the bottomless hunger of vermin who could never be fulfilled. Fishy whiskers shook with indignance, and piscine mouths opened as they darted into the clouds of impure particulate.

It vanished down their gullets and swept into their gills, and the flesh of the constructs bloated and broke. In turn, their fellows devoured them, each one becoming bigger than the last until only one swollen, rotted, and dying carp remained.

“Suyin, a seal, please,” she sent, without interrupting her song.

There was too much poison. Her construct had absorbed it all, but now, she could not dispel it without unleashing the toxin once more.

Li Suyin’s artificial eye spun in its socket, still glimmering from her examination of the devouring, and she flicked her wrist out. The claws of her gauntlet extended, raising her palm. This time, a sphere etched with visible arrays shot out and swallowed up the toxified construct.

“Strategy noted. Physical attacks incoming,” her friend warned.

Ling Qi inclined her head in acknowledgment and continued her song. It wasn’t easy, even with the right components to weave fresh bars which were not merely discordant noise. With her growing insight into the dirge of the beast kings, though, it was easier.

Water stirred, and piscine bodies with wolfish heads, snapping and snarling as they spun into existence, darted toward the cavern mouths where Li Suyin’s constructs stood guard.

From the dark, tendrils lashed out. On the right, they slammed into the raised stone shields of the Bear and Boar constructs. They did so again and again, a rapid, murderous beat, the force sending the water rippling with the impact. Skeletal feet were driven down into the cavern floor.

Others skulked and slunk through the water, trying to pass the twin blades of the Lion and Wolf, which slashed pale amalgam corpse flesh asunder, inky ichor spilling from the split tendrils. A dozen more clung to their limbs and dragged at their planted feet, seeking to yank the weapons from their hands.

On the left, the Horse and Ox fared the best. The flash of the mirror shield turned whipping tendrils into drifting, formless ooze and others were fried by the electric burst of the outthrust mancatcher.

Distorted by the water, her wolf-fish howled as they descended on the grasper tendrils dragging Suyin’s constructs down the middle tunnel. They circled the tendrils, avoiding counterattacks to nip and harass.

“Xinghong, support group one.”

A flash of red vaulted over the shield-wielding pair of Bear and Boar, and the whipping club of bone on the end of the hammering tendril caught him across the chest.

Reflexively, Ling Qi drew on the wood qi she had refined through the channels in her spine, and a pale green light mixed with light blue, casting the whole chamber in eerie color. She felt a prickle across her own chest, the ghost of an impact, and Xinhong’s chittering warcry held a confused note, even as he dug talons into rotting meat and began to tear.

“Whoa! That’s a new one. You sure you outta be taking damage directly like that?” Sixiang asked her.

Better than catching knives with her neck, wasn’t it? Ling Qi thought blithely.

More of the parasite flesh was coming. In the leftmost passage, what could only be described as a bubbling, pastelike mass of flesh was squeezing its way up the tunnel. Gurgling, lipless mouths and blinking eyes rippled in and out of existence across the mass.

Ling Qi’s eyes flicked toward the crystal as the light brightened and pulsed, a precise pattern rippling out from the central crystal to the growths all across the chamber and down the tunnels. From the light and pattern and the sense of calculation, Ling Qi was able to translate it to words.

“Current reserve calibrated. Resources marshaled and ordered. Beginning full purification drive.”

The water turned sharp and cold, the biting chill of a fresh, pure mountain stream. The dim opaqueness which lingered in it burned away, leaving it clear as glass and throwing the whole cavern into sharp relief.

In the purified water, the parasite’s corpseflesh boiled. Thin tendrils withered, and pollution burned off. It struggled toward the flashing crystals before it vanished down the hungry gullets of carp, which vanished in a flash of Suyin’s qi when they bloated so fat that they threatened to burst.

“Yuck. No wonder this spirit has had such a hard time. This thing’s made to sneak little bits of pain through to infect and subvert it,” Sixiang analyzed. “It’d win even without you here, but in a lil’ bit, it’d be right back where it started.”

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Ling Qi could only agree, and she considered her next move.

The question was how much of its strength this parasite would pour in before it realized they had a counter to its corruption.

“Suyin, double up on the center and right. I’ll take the leftmost tunnel.”

Her friend gave her a surprised look. “Horse and Ox are handling the attacks the best. Why…?” Suyin trailed off. Her artificial eye gleamed red as she focused on the horrid mass squeezing its way up the tunnel.

“It’s too dense for your dispelling mirror,” Ling Qi explained. “There’s too much fat and meat for it to be taken down with small shocks.”

“Understood,” Li Suyin agreed. She drew her constructs away with a flick of the wrist and a silent command.

Suyin trusted Ling Qi had a plan. And Ling Qi did! Of a sort.

“Ling Qi, you’d better not be thinking of trying to siphon the impurity your constructs eat yourself,” Sixiang threatened.

“Of course not. You and Qiyi are going to help me,” she thought back.