Abyssal Road Trip - 655 - Fitting (Patreon)

Amdirlain’s PoV - Nán Tiānjǐng

The brief conversation flowed into more sparring, with Ling Xi pushing to breach Amdirlain’s defence; she gently slipped the flurry of attacks aside while keeping watch over Toko and Minzhe. Beasts drawn by the cultivation spiral found the pair possessed fearsome steel fangs to serve as their mother’s guardians.

“You can go full strength,” Amdirlain offered, even as Minzhe's chain whip opened a tiger’s throat.

“I am trying my best; are you reading my mind?” A gliding step took her to the left, but Amdirlain simply switched hands to deflect the probing jabs.

“No, your balance.”

Ling Xi stepped back. “You always seem to know where I’ll strike. I thought my stance was balanced.”

“Not your stance,” Amdirlain corrected. “Your balance. The tempo of your movements and the way you hold your blade tell a tale. When you shift any of them, you change your songs. Your issue is that you are planning your attacks. Instead, you need to understand the feel of your weapon and the fight and allow them to come together in a natural harmony.”

“What are my chances of doing that against you?”

“Who can say? My response to an attack might inspire an insight, or something else might occur,” Amdirlain said. “Next time I’ll provide a projected foe slightly stronger and faster than you.”

“An illusion?” Ling Xi frowned, her melodies shifting erratically.

“It will have a physical weight, so if you’re reckless, you’ll suffer the consequences. Go rest and meditate.”

“Alright, I was wondering how I’d block an illusion.” Ling Xi stored her blade and headed for the stairs. 

Taking in the quiet murmur of the compound’s evening routine, Amdirlain tilted her head back to consider the sky.

It’s strange knowing that the realm’s rules merely present the stars. I wonder if their pattern comes from Sun Wukong’s birth realm. I made a harp the fast way today, but I should finish the one I started working on the normal way.

Rather than stick her nose into fresh trouble, Amdirlain retreated to the workshop she had previously used for woodworking. Across the benches, she laid out the sections of wood and tools she’d acquired. Humming softly, she began the mundane work of crafting a harp from the pieces she’d acquired a decade ago. The sound echoed oddly in the nearly empty chamber, reflecting off the bare stone and wood around it. She tended each piece at a mundane pace, letting the repetitive work of carving and sanding distil into a meditative routine. She kept on even when Drakon arrived back briefly and took Ling Xi away for the morning class.

When he returned an hour after dawn, he slipped quietly into the workshop where he stopped at the workbench she occupied. He propped himself against the bench’s edge and quietly watched her smooth a harp neck she’d been working on.

“Did you have a pleasant evening?”

“I did,” Drakon replied. “Are you okay?”

When the immediate, socially acceptable response froze on her lips, Amdirlain set the block and sandpaper aside. “I don’t think I rate an okay yet.”

“Oh?”

“Too many things at First Peak provoked fits of rage from old memories.”

The admission shifted her focus back enough that the blood pulsed in her temples, and fury darkened her gaze. Amdirlain gritted her teeth and forced it aside, but didn’t lock it away.

The sour notes didn’t show in his expression, but his gaze lost some of its gleam. “That sounds unpleasant.”

“It’s unhealthy. People’s attitudes and activities rubbed against old emotional wounds,” Amdirlain clarified.

“Do you need more meditation time? We can do stuff together later.” Drakon said; concern rang through him louder than the sad tones.

She leaned forward and patted his arm. “You’ve been looking forward to spending time together.”

“It’s not worth any cost to you.”

“The things we’ve found have shown me places I need to heal, but I don’t have to look after them all at once.” Amdirlain gave his wrist a gentle squeeze.

“If I wasn’t here, what would you want to do?”

Amdirlain sighed. “Get home as fast as I could. However, that’s beside the point, as it’s not our current situation, and I’ve let regrets ruin too many things.”

“If you’re sure.”

“I’ll meditate on them each evening and spend time reinforcing myself with happier memories. In that regard, let’s stick to close-knit communities who look out for each other and away from the worst politics.“

“A lot of border towns and villages are like that,” Drakon offered. “So you’ve finished tidying up all the issues at First Peak?”

“Except for the mystery of Toko’s poisoner, which I’ll need your help to resolve. The ties we found earlier led to dead ends, but there was a more overt attack last night. Someone used a shadow technique to put Toko, her brother, and her guards into a shadowy dimension.”

“I have a sense of Toko already, so let me peek backwards. About when last night?”

“Early evening, just before full dark,” Amdirlain replied.

“I’m surprised you haven’t figured out how I made the time window.”

“We don’t have to match each other. I focused on the karmic ties rather than how you folded time,” Amdirlain explained.

With his hands before him as if holding a sphere, a spatial window that rested in his palms displayed Toko. She and Minzhe were valiantly attempting to skin a trio of wolves; on a nearby rock were three small demonic beast stones.

“They must have had breakthroughs,” Drakon murmured.

“Yep, Xuelian’s cultivation spiral pushed the animals into a demonic beast state,” Amdirlain confirmed. “They’ve got some more bodies in Toko’s storage ring.”

“They don’t know a thing about skinning an animal, do they?”

“Apparently not.”

Folding the image, Drakon shifted the window’s focus, turning it back an hour at a time as layers built up. He jumped past the shadowy dimension and found the siblings sparring on a grassy hillside away from the tent city. With time advancing again, Amdirlain kept track of the karmic threads, and Drakon stopped the progression when the evening’s shadows swelled up to engulf the group. The manifestation that shunted them away led to a lynx beast-kin whom Guàiyáng had dismissed as not knowing the technique. He sat in a blacked-out tent, a cracked practice jian on the table before him, and next to it sat a stack of inky spirit coins. A half-mauled ear twitched and turned as he held his hands above the wooden blade.

“A focus for the technique?” Drakon asked.

“I’d say a focus for connecting the technique, not executing it. From its theme, it broke earlier that day, and it carries Minzhe’s melody. Can you trace this cultivator backward? I want to know when and how he got the blade.”

“It’s only a day in the past, so that’s easy. How long ago was the blade broken?”

“Just over two hours,” Amdirlain offered. 

“Well, instead of rewinding continually,” Drakon twisted the image in his hands, and its focus jumped; the blade lay among others near where the siblings were sparring. A beast-kin with black-and-red hair and short feline ears approached, giving the guards a casual wave. The plain robes the male wore gave him the air of a servant, and the guard nodded in recognition.

“Any blades in need of care?”

“A bunch of human-made trash that breaks too fast.” The guard nudged the nearest hilt.

“I’ll see if a smith can repair them or just re-use the metal.”

With Toko’s flurry of attacks, gouging more chips from his latest blade, Minzhe backpedalled laughing. He signalled a surrender and turned to the servant collecting the blades.

“You can take this one as well. Toko apparently took offence to it.”

Sheathing the badly stressed blade, Minzhe added it to the collection near the guard.

“How many do you have left, Minzhe?” Toko asked. “You’re not vandalising your practice jian to get out of training with blades, are you?”

“I would never do that,” Minzhe said primly. “It’s not my fault that a jian is an inferior weapon to a chain whip.”

Toko rolled her eyes.

The servant offered a smile and bundled up the stacked weapons and headed back to the tent city. Among the tents, the male shadow lynx they’d seen with the weapon later bumped into the servant, and the weapons spilled to the ground. As most tumbled away, one vanished in mid-air into the cultivator’s storage ring. A sour note rang through the karmic tie that formed between the pair. 

“Are you going to grab him?”

“We need to get him clear unless I want some cultivators at the tent city to notice,” Amdirlain said. “Let’s hop somewhere remote.”

“Did you have somewhere particular in mind?” 

The workroom disappeared, replaced by a red, dusty flat that stretched in all directions; scraggly dry shrubs clung determinedly to the dry soil. “Friendly enough?”

“Are you trying to scare him? It looks barren,” Drakon’s nose wrinkled. “Why would you want to come here? The only purpose of deserts is an ecological balance point on a temperate world.”

“Just a tiny dose of home,” Amdirlain quipped. “Though I was a city girl and didn’t visit the outback as often as I wanted. There is a weight to it that lingers with you if you let yourself look beyond the sand and rocks.”

“What sort of weight?”

“Even in the harshest places, life finds a way,” Amdirlain said, pointing to a lizard hiding within the fragile shade offered by the thin scrub. 

“Which doesn’t mean you should make your life harsher than it needs to be,” Drakon winked.

“Oh, burn.”

“You’ve said that before,” Drakon said. “Like a little heat is going to trouble someone enamoured with phoenixes.”

“We are getting sidetracked,” Amdirlain said. “Do you want to snatch the cultivator, or should I?”

“Are you sure you want to do this? I think you should give the information to Guàiyáng.”

“I was thinking about doing that while we spoke, but I just can’t let it go.”

With a grimace, she yanked the cultivator right off his seat and dropped him sprawling to the ground. Before he could do more than try to stand, Amdirlain stuck out a hand, and streams of air rippled from it. They caught him, yanking him upright by pressure applied to his neck and ‌arms. The lynx’s dark eyes narrowed in pain from vice-like holds that ranged across his limbs and throat. Dressed in fine silk robes of deep purple and red, with silver clasps sealing the top, his attire wouldn’t have been out of place among mid-level nobles in the human kingdoms.

“You‘re on thin ice with me. Why did you toss Toko and Minzhe into that shadowy zone?” Amdirlain asked.

Spite filled the dark gaze that fixed on her, but she set a mental net of qi floating through his mind. Their scents told him neither of them were human, and his nose twitched again, trying to place their species.

“They taint the tribe with their presence. The elders should have banished Guàiyáng for fucking one of that filthy species.”

Drawing in the net, Amdirlain got some names and a target, but mostly images of meetings and coins being passed over. They jingled in the silk pouch, and the darkness within each slithered across his senses.

He wasn’t looking to kill Toko, so whoever poisoned Toko didn’t hire him.

“Save the rant; I know you’re hoping I’ll kill you quickly. Who paid you the shadow spirit coins that you had on your table yesterday? Was it Minzhe you were after? Were you uncertain who owned it, so you unleashed a wider technique? What about Toko, Yǐng?” Amdirlain asked. “That is your name, isn’t it, Yǐng?”

Her quick barrage of questions set his mind leaping about, and she pulled free strands of thoughts. Together, they formed an incomplete but uncomfortable picture of the tribes.

“I can’t tell you who the job was for,” Yǐng replied. “It came from a fate broker.”

Interesting term. Is that why they didn’t have a karmic tie to Minzhe as well? Too bad for him; I saw his face through Yǐng’s memories.

“You had your own reasons for taking it.”

“Yes,” Yǐng grunted.

A nearby ley-line supplied what Amdirlain needed: drawing earth qi up through the nearby shadows saturated its nature, and Amdirlain turned it on Yǐng. The colours of his flesh and clothing washed out as he turned into a living shadow; his form thinned and stretched across the ground, mimicking the morning shadows. He screamed soundlessly as his body thinned out further.

“Now you’re no longer a beast-kin.”

Amdirlain released her hold, and Yǐng vanished into the shadowy space, sucked in through a shadow beneath a swaying bush.

“You left him alive?”

“Yes, though he might have preferred me to kill him,” Amdirlain said. “Now he’ll only be able to see the physical world through shadows and never interact with it again.”

“But how?”

“I remember a few fey of the Autumn Court who existed that way. He is unlikely to adapt to it in time to find a way to free himself. What I did doesn’t make him immortal or undying, and there are creatures in there with him. Since his meridians didn’t get translated, I wouldn’t give him long to live; getting torn to shreds is the fate he tried to inflict.”

“You’re going for the fate broker next,” Drakon said knowingly.

“That’s not a question.”

“If they kept the karmic lines hidden from you, they might be a nascent soul.”

“Or just more experienced with them than I am, and have a way to stop the ties from forming,” Amdirlain said.

“That might allow some interesting techniques. Perhaps we should be extra careful,” Drakon said. “Did you pick up when they met?”

“The morning I left the siblings at the camp.”

“I’ll trace him from dawn and see when they meet.”

After reopening the window showing Yǐng the previous day, Drakon tweaked it until he found a point where Yǐng reached for a tent flag; then the time window turned blank for nearly half an hour of advancement.

“The cultivator missed one thing,” Amdirlain murmured. “Not only can I hear the ward around the tent, but there is one that has exactly the same ward in Guàiyáng’s tent city.”

“Did they miss it?” Drakon questioned.

“What do you mean?”

“The issue is we can’t be sure who was in the tent at the time Yǐng went into it. If they can block a time window and you couldn’t retrieve the conversation fully from Yǐng’s memory, then what if that image isn’t trustworthy?” Drakon tried to twist the time window in his grasp, but it again showed a blank slate grey as it slipped across Yǐng’s stay inside. “Can you peek inside that tent now?”

“No.”

“Neither can I,” Drakon observed. “I can see all approaches to the tent but not its interior. We’ll need to get stronger before we try to seize whoever it's hiding. If we inform Guàiyáng that a fate broker from his tribe is involved, he might know more. We don’t have to solve this ourselves, and it might not even connect to Toko’s poisoning.”

“That seems possible.”

“Or the beast-kin who died might have had similarly venomous feelings as Yǐng. I don’t have the strength to track all his movements from years ago to see if this fate broker or another was involved.”

“I hate unresolved mysteries.”

“Is it the mystery, or someone targeting children the way grandfather targeted you for manipulation? Father blames himself for giving Kronos an opportunity to talk to you alone, you know,” Drakon said.

“If he hadn’t made an opening, Kronos would have forced one, and who knows how that would have gone. I wouldn’t have been safe around the Greek gods, so it’s just as well we left.”

“It seems there isn’t an isolated danger to Toko. It might not be as bad for other part-bloods, but Guàiyáng is too important yet lacks the ability to keep his daughter safe,” Drakon said. “You have them somewhere safe?”

“Safe-ish; they’ve been killing newly formed demonic beasts,” Amdirlain said. “Xuelian said she’d set up a shrine on a mountain south of where I moved the slum dwellers, so I nudged her into nascent soul.”

“Nudged?” A smirk lit Drakon’s face.

“She needed only a little push,” Amdirlain confirmed.

“Then tell Xuelian and Guàiyáng we can’t be sure if the tribal lands would be safe for either of the children. Toko and Minzhe stay with her, and I can create something so Guàiyáng can visit Toko.”

“Toko is of an age to join a sect. Actually past that age,” Amdirlain said. 

“I’m sure Xuelian would love to train her daughter.”

Amdirlain grimaced. “That doesn’t always work out so well.”

“She could come with us. Ling Xi could use practice teaching what she’s learnt.”

She sent a message off to Guàiyáng with the details she’d pulled from Yǐng and the fate broker. With that done, the pair of them returned to the workroom, where Amdirlain picked up the harp neck she’d been mundanely shaping. Eyes closed, she turned it in her hands, trying to find any rough patches by touch. “Let’s get back to our planned travels. When do you want to leave?”

“Whenever you want, but how about you pick where we go next?”

“Scouting a region to travel in is your responsibility,” Amdirlain laughed. “Don’t drop it in my lap.”

Drakon grinned sheepishly. “I found a whole mess of trouble.”

“Don’t let that trouble you. You did well, and I know Toko would be thankful.” Amdirlain stored the pieces and tools, clearing the bench of debris. “Do you have another place you want to check out?”

“Nothing that I’ve had time to assess.”

“It doesn’t have to be somewhere new. If there is an area you and Ling Xi have travelled through that you’d like to revisit, that would work.” Amdirlain said, smiling. “I doubt they’d connect an itinerant smith and his apprentice with three energy cultivators.”

“You have a point. There are a couple of areas that should fit your preference for a close-knit community,” Drakon hesitated. “I still think you should meditate again and clear more of your pain. Get home faster.”

Worry over what might be going on with Sarah and the others at home prickled across her skin.

“Please, I’ve let regrets ruin too many things.”

“That goes two ways. I don’t want you regretting getting back to our realm too late.”

“Given the different temporal pace between this realm and our home realm, I’ve got time for us to journey together and learn more about each other. You’ve made some progress with your cultivation, haven’t you?”

“Only one tier,” Drakon rumbled.

“One nascent soul tier, which many would envy you for,” Amdirlain said. “If you’ve progressed one tier, you can progress more. I could create a bunch of chaos for you to bring into order. You’ve already done part of that, building new homes for people.”

Drakon opened his mouth to protest, only to blink. The spiral that started around him drew a laugh from Amdirlain; the shifting primordial energy rising from his depths propelled the qi accumulated in his dantian out into the apartment. It lit up the wards and swept over Ling Xi on the floor below, practically standing her hair on end and flooding her own dantian.

I should have made that observation during the morning class and seen how many people broke through. Oh well, missed opportunity.

On the floor below them, a spiral started up as Ling Xi absorbed a fraction of the released qi.