Forge of Destiny

Threads 545-Fantasia 8

”You can keep eating, but Iʼd like you to stay here by us, and provide some qi,” Ling Qi said.

”Why?” Lanchi asked suspiciously, swallowing her food with an unladylike gulp. ”You have lots, and the lake is right here!”

”Because you do have a regret. You thought about going with your sister Jinli. And that is a direct path to seeing where she may have gone.”

”Did you get such an impression? Sharp eyes. I would not have guessed it,” Bao Qian wondered.

”I donʼt wanna,” Lanchi denied flatly. ”And I donʼt care what you bribe me with. I donʼt wanna.”

Ling Qi stared at her, and Lanchi met her eyes without flinching. Lanchi was not lying. Ling Qi did not think a simple offer of sweets, no matter how savory, was going to budge her, and Lanchi obviously knew they werenʼt really going to threaten her in any real way. That was the cost of revealing that they were acting agents for her grandmother.

”We are looking for a spirit to take with us,” Ling Qi revealed. ”It doesnʼt have to be an ending, if sheʼs found. Your grandmother just wants to see if we can handle troublesome children. You donʼt think sheʼs going to find the ginseng, do you? What is it even supposed to do, give her a material body? You need more than raw reagents for that.”

Lanchi glanced away.

”Help us out. If this game ends and we donʼt find her, do you really think your grandmother is going to let her get away with the sickle on her own? Even if she doesnʼt come with us, I might be able to talk your grandmother into letting her go out in the world. Maybe both of you could go together. Iʼm pretty persuasive.”

It felt bad, picking at the gaps in the young spiritʼs armor and dragging out her anxieties at the first flash of vulnerability from simple twitches in expression and posture. The lazy glutton was only the surface. Lanchi was a surprisingly good girl, more empathetic than Hanyi, certainly, who could be a bit of a selfish gremlin without reminders.

Bao Qian didnʼt move to speak up, and she appreciated that he didnʼt feel the need to butt in when she was doing her work. Then again, he probably recognized a sales pitch.

Lanchi scuffed her foot across the ground and turned sharply away, clutching her plate to her chest and stuffing a rice cracker into her mouth. Ling Qi watched her back even as she chewed deliberately loudly and rudely, pretending to ignore her.

Ling Qi shrugged. ”Well, letʼs begin working it out for ourselves, Bao Qian. Perhaps we treat it like prospecting, aiming to look at where different intentions in direction took us? Even if we canʼt find her directly, we can narrow the possibilities.”

”I did not know you had much of an interest in prospecting,” Bao Qian commented, moving beside her to gingerly lay a hand along the edge of the mirror. ”I can provide some stability to you at least. My qi should be good for that much. You can anchor yourself to it while you divine.”

”Cai Renxiang has set me some tasks,” Ling Qi explained. ”A good administrator must have at least a basic grounding in everything they are overseeing. Apparently, this makes it harder for subordinates to pass off incorrect information, knowingly or not. And thank you for your help.”

”Of course, of course,” Bao Qian replied agreeably.

”Fine!”

Ling Qi turned her head to look at Lanchi as she stomped up, laying a hand on the edge of the mirror.

”Iʼll give you a place to start at least, or youʼll probably end up dragging me all over Grandmamaʼs demesne.”

”As you wish, Miss Lanchi,” Ling Qi said. ”Just a bit of qi then. Iʼll control the viewing.”

She kept her attention firmly on Lanchi, just in case the spirit tried anything tricky. She was certain that her words had struck home and that her inference about Lanchiʼs feelings for her sister was correct, but she could not be sure that the spirit actually bought into her pitch.

Ling Qi looked down into the mirror and carefully wove her qi through it as she had seen Lanchi do, firmly ignoring the rush of images that yanked at her eyes, her thoughts, and her heart alike. Through a whirlwind of futures that would never be, she peered into the gently rippling depths of the looking glass with the mote of qi provided by Lanchi firmly in her grip. The trembling mote shuddered under the pressure she and the mirror put upon it, but threads spun out and Ling Qiʼs reflection wavered.

Flashes of blue, red, and gold whirled. Ling Qi spied mist-filled halls, a manor of impossible proportions, ceilings far out of sight, raining leaves, and halls that stretched on forever, twisting in directions human language had no names for. Through it, three maidens fled with their loot clutched to their chests, their faces flush with exhilaration.

Ling Qi got her first glimpse of Jinli, the third and final spirit. Her hair was golden, and her gown the color of freshly harvested wheat. Wide flapping sleeves hid her hands. She had a delicate face, and a long, swishing, fluffy tail, and soft rounded ears like that of a weasel’s.

She saw the three spill out of a door, tumble over each other, head over tail, and land in a heap, laughing and exhilarated among the leaf litter. She saw them hopping to their feet, chattering. Honpao puffed out her chest, waving her hands at her sisters, and the other two scoffed, shaking their heads in negation.

Ling Qi tried to dig deeper into the vision to hear more than rushing wind and crinkling leaves, but she felt a strain when she tried. It felt like water pressing against her mind, threatening to leak through as if between the ill-sealed boards of a boatʼs hull.

The sisters argued, even as they resumed running through the woods. Their squabble came to its end in a clearing outside a familiar village of webs and dreams. Hongpao faced the others and spoke insistently, gesturing out with one hand and slapping the other against her chest.

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Like static, Ling Qi felt the declaration of superiority and leadership, if not the words, and the affront when it was refused.

Hongpaoʼs face went red, and she stomped off, leaving Lanchi and Jinli alone. Lanchi rolled her eyes, saying something, and Jinli laughed, bouncing excitedly on the balls of her feet. Jinli said something as well, only for her face to fall as Lanchi shook her head.

Disappointment, hurt, and a sizzling tingle as a reverberation. She had found a point of choice.

The vision wavered, and her vision went double, then triple, splintering more and more. Overlapping figures moved in subtly different ways. Ling Qi steadied herself and forced herself to focus through the tide of other directions the mirror tried to drag her in, even as her own choices and regrets clawed at the edges of the vision.

She focused on the path she wanted to see, and the vision snapped back into focus. In the fading echo of what was, Jinli turned away and ran off, clearly upset. In the one Ling Qi wanted, she kicked her foot through the leaves, looking down before raising her eyes and making another plea, holding out her hand. And here, with hesitation, Lanchi took it, and extended the mirror out to Jinli as they were doing now, looking for @#$%^^&*())^%%.

Mirror into mirror. She was a pane of glass, and someone had just swung a hammer into it. Pain spiked through her soul. Thoughts splintered and flew apart, spinning down a thousand threads, a thousand motes of Ling Qi winging down a thousand timelines.

She heard her own breath hiss out from a hundred angles, her focus wavering before she focused on the solid hand that clasped her shoulder. It was a warm grip, a firm grip, and she dragged her spinning, schooling thoughts back to it, like a fisherman hauling in the catch of his net.

The splintering feeling crept to a stop and began to reverse. She felt herself grasp onto his wrist, icy fingernails biting into his skin and spreading a crackling frost. The pull threatened to drag him under, too; she could feel his own foundation, already occupied just with existing in the liminal, waver.

Outside. Always outside. Looking in, always the welcome guest, never the host. Shining gold buffed to perfection, endlessly reflecting. Fear, fear to be left out, left behind, not forgotten, not hated, but merely there. A conduit, without treasures of his own. Who was it who wanted him, rather than his services? How to buy what wasnʼt sold? How to sell that which wasnʼt bought?

Ling Qi dragged herself back together, snatched the splinters of herself that had been embedded in gold back to her own self, and dragged herself back to the vision of the mirror.

A field of waving gold, flat and stretching to the horizon, filled with whirling winds where autumn chill met summer heat. A pillar of rock sat in the center, rippling with colors and grown over with moss. Atop it, there was a farmerʼs hut and a blooming garden of herbs.

She sucked in a sharp breath and pulled herself out of the mirror. It felt like she had been drowning beneath a lake. The cold air of the temple prickled on her skin. She hadnʼt felt such a chill in a long time.

”You had an idea of where she might go,” Ling Qi said distantly. ”At least, you would have known where to look when she asked.”

”Jinli likes to chatter. She said sheʼd definitely check Old Man Stonebonesʼ garden, but itʼs not like I knew sheʼd go there first,” Lanchi defended. The spirit hopped back out of armʼs reach, though she didnʼt run away.

Ling Qi held her head and directed her question to Bao Qian. ”Do you recognize that name? Iʼm still dizzy.”

”A land spirit of the Foundations, associated with the gravelly soil on mountainsides in the more marginal lands,” Bao Qian replied, his voice tight as well. He was holding the mirror up as she had almost dropped it. ”A local deity associated with the Bountiful Earth. Not generally hostile, but does cause avalanches when disrespected.”

It was something to go on. Yes, she remembered seeing that name among the rolls of land gods in the Foundations region. The Foundations was a very rural region under regular threat of raiding. She could find the field and the pillar in the liminal.

”Hanyi is very fond of you,” Ling Qi reassured him. ”She wouldnʼt go out of her way to try and help you if she merely saw you as a provider of services. I look forward to seeing you as well. Youʼre always reliable. I donʼt think that is a bad trait.”

It wasnʼt the fluttery, heart-pounding feeling she had felt for Meng Dan or Xuan Shi, but it was always good to see his wagon rocking as it rolled along the road. She trusted him with her sister after all, troublemaker that she was.

”You do not need to pity me, Miss Ling,” Bao Qian said stiffly.

”And I am not,” she rebutted. Straightening up, Ling Qi fixed Lanchi with a gimlet eye, stopping the spirit’s slow shuffle toward the door. Casually, Ling Qi reached out, snagging Lanchi by the sleeve and pulling her back.

”We should move. Even if we have a lead, who knows if Miss Jinli is still there?” Bao Qian asked somberly.

They both needed a moment to recover before they could really talk. Ling Qi nodded and slid her foot along the steps of the dance, pulling them out through the labyrinth toward the fields of rolling gold and the mountain pillar at their center.

Wheat blew in the breeze, the high wind tugging at her hair as the three of them emerged in the shadow of the towering pillar.

As they arrived, the earth trembled, and a booming bark that sounded like the collapse of a mountainside rang in her ears. In the distance, she saw a tiny slip of gold flitting on the wind, sickle in hand as Jinli dashed across the wheatstalks. Chasing after her and emerging from a mighty cloud of dust and grit was a hound the size of a house, his body seemingly made of mossy mountain rock. A plethora of herbs sprouted all across his back and in the seams in his boulderlike body.

Ling Qi pinched the bridge of her nose. At least they had found Jinli.

It was so tempting just to solve this problem directly. A small distraction from Bao Qian, and a flick of her wrist, and her snare would reel the golden-haired maiden in just like that.

”I suppose we had best settle this, while we are here. A nettled land god would be troublesome for the people in the Foundations, hm?” Bao Qian proposed.

”It would. And we donʼt need to be in any rush. You wonʼt make trouble and try to escape if we help your sister here, will you, Lanchi?”

”Youʼve got the mirror anyway. Whatʼd be the point in running away? Just help that doofus before she gets hurt… Please,” the spirit pleaded, crossing her arms.

Oh, Ling Qi wasnʼt too worried about that. Watching Jinliʼs skirmish with the stone hound out of the corner of her eye, she could see that the golden haired spirit darted with speed, her feet barely bending the stalks of the wheat plants she landed on. The hound chased her with a booming bark, his boulderlike paw slapping down where she had been a moment ago, making the earth churn and buck like disturbed water.

The hound didnʼt damage the field at all either. She observed the dog spirit pounce and disappear like a boulder falling through the surface of a lake, leaving only rustling gold in his wake before emerging in a spray of gravelly earth, leaping after the fleeing Jinli. Jinli wasnʼt in immediate danger.

”How are you with dogs?” Ling Qi asked.

”Inexperienced, but enthusiastic,” Bao Qian replied cheerfully. ”He does look like a jolly boy, doesnʼt he? Shall I draw attention, while you see what Miss Jinli is trying to accomplish?”

”That sounds like a plan,” Ling Qi agreed. ”Iʼll get back to you in a moment, once Iʼve had a chance to figure the situation out.”

She flitted into the sky, and Bao Qian advanced through the waving field of grain toward the bounding hound and the golden spark.