Threads 131-Convergence 9

A spiderweb of fractures spread out from the central crack. A sickening unlight radiated out from them, and to Ling Qi’s alarm, she felt a disquieting sensation as if she were dispersing herself to hide, but involuntarily. Ling Qi seized control back of her own qi just as her fingertips began to dematerialize and drift away. The effort brought a sharp pain like a hundred needles had been jammed into her fingers at once.

She was back on her feet by then, and the others were clambering up as well, many fixing wide eyes on the sky. Ling Qi couldn’t pull her eyes away from the stone.

There was another sharp crack, and then a sound like soft stone crumbling and a whole section of the stone caved inward as if it were hollow. She saw fragments scatter, and it became clear that the “stone” was actually a shell. The unlight blazed from within.

$^%^(&&^&%^$ept back, and seven rays of light hewed the sky again. The mountain of gold blazed with all the colors of the dawn and set itself in their path, one hundred hands raised in warding.

Unlight pulsed, and the starstone exploded outward. Ling Qi drew upon darkness and lake qi and summoned the rippling starless shroud even as the Mist descended. She hissed in pain as the shroud tried to absorb the fragments only to violently reject them. Yet, the defensive technique held.

The bleeding clouds fled, carried on the winds of a typhoon, and a thousand wounds wept rain upon the land, drowning it in pain. The Inferno howled in rage, and ten thousand devils rent into a hundred thousand pieces dogged its heels, broken bodies and severed limbs hurling themselves after the fleeing clouds in a frenzy. The beat of the drums broke the earth in their fury.

Ling Qi heard someone shouting something, but the sound of the world was washed out as the dust cleared and revealed a radiant figure standing in the ruin of the stone. Bright as a star, too bright to look at directly without pain spiking in her skull, it was nonetheless small, a bead of starlight no bigger than a small child.

Ling Qi felt her stomach drop as the thing’s attention fell upon her. Sixiang’s qi flared inside of her, and for just a moment, the eye-searing light seemed to dim, and the burning on her skin grew less. She met curious red eyes.

The figure looked superficially like a young boy with dusky skin like her own and long white hair that trailed down to where his feet should have been. At the bottom of his ribs, flesh transformed into prismatic light, and she saw the shadow of a half-formed spine within, but nothing more.

The spirit’s head cocked to the side as it observed her. Curiosity faded, replaced by cold.

Enemy.

An arm rose, and flesh tore apart. Spikes of seven-colored crystal formed a blade.

Ling Qi drew on her depleted reserves and leapt back, even as she struggled to keep herself from scattering, knowing somehow that if she did, she wouldn’t reform. Light, clean and colorless, crashed down.

A mountain crumbled. Gold burned black, and painted caverns were shorn of color. The light of dawn fled, and there was only night. There was a hole in the sky, bright blue replaced by starry black.

Cai Renxiang stood in front of her, expression strained. Hungry crimson light bled into her aura,and Liming rippled. The gown’s hem grew frayed, thread unspooling to reveal the girl’s boots. Ruan Shen was at her side, strumming a tune that eased the strain on her spirit and made her feel less like she was dissolving in her own skin. A half-dozen defensive techniques, earth and fire, wind and mountain, all washed over her, a conflicting multitude of light.

And before them, the spirit paused, bladed arm mid-swing, staring at Cai Renxiang in confusion.

Horns of war called from the north, and in the valley ahead, Ling Qi saw the flash of banners.

The false dawn reversed, and unlight bled away behind the southern peaks. A curtain of stars descended from the hole in the sky left in its wake.

The spirit blinked, and it gazed to the south where the ineffable pressure was receding. Its mouth opened. No sound escaped, but Ling Qi heard the plaintive cry that echoed through the realm of spirit. It shot into the sky, trailing a rainbow.

Ling Qi’s knee hit the dirt as the suffocating presence receded. After the battle, the run, and now, this, her qi was depleted, and she was exhausted. From the valley in the north, she saw the leading edge of a sect force emerge. Three cyan cultivators soared above, and green, yellow, and red realm forces marched below.

Their part was done.

***

Ling Qi held in a groan as she squeezed her eyes shut.

Was this what qi exhaustion felt like? Her head was pounding, her senses felt fuzzy, and her whole body felt like a wrung-out rag. Yet still, they could not rest. Ling Qi stood at attention beside Cai Renxiang among the gathered disciples from the mission. The group was not as large as it had been at the start.

The perimeter group had been savaged. When the event in the south had transpired, they had found themselves the primary target of the shamans commanding the storm, and worse, they had suffered from being caught in the eddies of the event. Three disciples had died o