Memories of the Fall

...Always two there are, a master and a disciple. Kill the master and the disciple will become a thorn in your side for millenniums after. Kill the disciple and the master will likely hunt your juniors to extinction and haunt your every endeavour like an evil spectre. Kill both, and you will find that the masters own master will become the devil that stalks your every shadow thereafter, until you are running from godly monsters and devilish gods and wondering where it all went wrong.

This, if anyone ever askes is why only two people have ever broken into and out of that slaughter pit that the Robber Dukes made beneath the Dark Veils and the Perilous Realm. One, the Disciple who was captured on a whim and thrown in there for sport, and then the Master, who came seeking his lost charge and made a generation cry tears of blood for the waste within their ranks before all was said and done.

Their prestige, like an inconvenient stone in the boot of history, was to be the crack that brought those old advisors' plots to naught and finally set in motion the events that brought the Era of Unending War and our most brutal dynasty to an inauspicious end.

Excerpt from ‘Annals of a Dark Age’

~By Rt. Honourable Lord Marcus De Roche

~ Arai and Sana, Majoring in Spider Butchering ~

As she worked rapidly on her side of the hall, sorting through corpses worth saving and exploiting and which they would just have to get rid of, the sounds of unfolding calamity started to intrude through the tunnels around the hall. Enraged roars and the distant echoes of screaming rising and falling away as various monsters they hadn’t encountered discovered that their world and territories were ending in fungi themed hell.

Reaching the far side, where they had entered this place, Sana joined her a few moments later and they turned to consider the colony.

“How many were there on your side?” her sister asked.

“A dozen that are over nascent soul it looks like. Quite a few at soul foundation as well. The golden cores are already starting to get corrupted though.”

“That’s fast,” her sister nodded.

“Much of it is inside the colony,” she noted, looking at the drifts of corpses there that were already sporting white veins and even a few small mushrooms.

“So how do you reckon we do this?” she said after a few more moments’ consideration.

“Set it on fire? Explosively?” her sister said with a certain degree of venom in her tone.

“What you did to the sludge?”

“Well we have enough materials to draw the circle manually, and these corpses are full of qi that we will never successfully refine ourselves, seems a shame to waste them,” Sana said with a shrug.

“There is that,” she agreed, thinking rapidly how that might be possible.

The idea of setting everything on fire was fairly straightforward, in principle at least. What was complex was ensuring that the mushroom colony was the thing that caught on fire, not them.

“Do you think we can go into the field?” Sana mused.

“What... you want to cut down the rest of the mushrooms?” she said, half-joking.

“I was wondering about it, given how some of those white-green trees are starting to change colour,” her sister muttered.

Looking over where she was pointing, she did a double-take, because Sana was correct, several of the mushrooms were starting to manifest purple, red and sickly yellow splotches in shifting patterns across their caps and rings.

“Hmmm, what is the alternative?”

“Uhh… we do properly what I did in a hurry with the sludge pit?”

She stared at the mushrooms doing odd things again for a long few seconds.

Moon mushrooms doing inexplicable things was probably not a good thing, a part of her mind suggested.

“Better to do what we can without risking ourselves I think. What did you do before exactly anyway?”

“The thing everyone is told never to do, with five elements formations,” Sana said drily. “You remember the speech Grandmaster Li gave that time?”

“Oh. Big boom,” she shuddered, recalling how animated the old man had been about never creating an unbounded transformation cycle because it would just keep ramping up until all the things exploded in all the ways.

“Yes. BIG boom!” her sister said with a certain light of anger in her eyes.

“I’ll let you make the arrays then,” she said. “What do you need me to do?”

“Pile up corpses by proximal affinity and get any useful cores out in the process?” Sana mused. “There is little left here anyway after the corrosive orbs went off, so we might as well start back on the far side.”

Making their way back around, she took the leaf and started to carve out cores and check their elemental affinities. Sana headed back over to the spider queen and using one of its shell pieces began to work out what framework she needed. Going through the corpses as she was, she began to throw smaller ones over in that direction, building up piles of Yin Wood and Yin Fire attributed corpses by the pool.

Spores still drifted all around them as she marked the progress of the transforming mushrooms throughout the colony. Sana was working on the array as fast as she could using the spider queens ichor as a catalyst to draw the majority of the large array that was surrounding growing piles of spider corpses. The majority being Yin Wood Attributed was clearly causing some need to change the way the array framework combined, based on how much swearing and referring to the scrips her sister was doing. Thankfully, even with that setback, their progress was faster than she was expecting.

And fast was necessary. Arai glanced over at the colony, she was certain now that the changes Sana had pointed out were the beginnings of what the Bureau records rather sketchily called the ‘recovery and control phase’ of a colonies expansion cycle. Where it seeded the surroundings with more fungi of various useful, exotic variants that could rapidly help it replenish what it had just expended by being forced to spore to defend itself.

As she watched, hauling another Soul Foundation male spider corpse close enough to throw it on the appropriate pile, several of the mushrooms near the water, that were showing golden patterns started rapidly manifesting yellow rills below their caps. Soon their stems started to shrink and their caps sink down and deform. To the left, others that had purple patterns were going blotchy green beneath them. Those in the far side with red and purple patterns were bleeding red from their gills. Those below them that were spattered by that liquid gained strange star-like patterns on their creamy white caps.

Minutes ticked on as these changes continued to unfold with a concerning increase in pace. It was a great relief when Sana finally signalled that the framework was complete and no more cores were needed. She could stop being preferential and just start throwing every spider around her onto the bigger pile that was ‘fuel’ for the array. The whole setup was crude beyond belief, and lifted almost wholesale from what Eleanora had shown in its basics,

On the far side of the colony, one of the yellow stripped rills rippled and a lurid yellow dust cloud drifted through half the colony, suspended in the qi field. Both of them glanced at it and cursed. Sana continued drawing and she moved away from the colony and started to throw more of the male spiders and those ‘normal’ ones also at Golden Core at the piles. There was no point in separating them out at this point, the spore contamination on everything of this grade was close to total.

A few minutes later, they both had to pause again to take stock, as the ambient qi in the whole hall was abruptly tugged inwards towards the colony for a heartbeat. On the back of that, the yellow cloud that was swirling around the colony swirled around and scattered definitively over the pool, turning the now rippling surface bright yellow.

Seconds later one of the mushrooms with lurid purple and green blotches shivered and a lateral blast of spores close to small apples in size erupted out in a ring all around it. Propelled by some kind of intent they seemed to bounce randomly around the colony and scattered in every direction. Hitting walls, floors, corpses, the rockfall, landing in the pond. Some even made it beyond to near where the spider queen’s corpse still lay, where they started to put out threads almost immediately.

The yellow spores that were flowing like mist across the far side of the room soon coated the ground like dust blown on a north wind from the fissure flats. The greenish-grey spikey bouncing spores, once their threads reached a certain distance all began to explode, splattering their surroundings with a strange mucus that rapidly manifested small, conical capped greenish-white mushrooms at a rate that was close to unnatural.

As they continued to watch, the purple and white mushrooms also reached ‘maturation’ and began to release a creeping miasma of inky grey spores that swirled around and began to slowly settle downwards like streamers up to thirty metres from it. Where they touched corpses they rapidly sprouted little bulbous, moist purple and green fungi feelers that started to burrow into their hosts. Where they fell on the ground itself they grew up as purple stemmed mushrooms with grey caps that had a faintly inauspicious aura about them. ‘Soul Seizing’ and’ Soul Setting’ mushrooms.

“That’s our cue to wrap this up!” she called over to Sana, who nodded and waved for her to come over.

Slinging spiders using her qi now, she glanced back at the pool as she made her way over and had to do a double-take.

It was growing disk-shaped fungi on the water. Nightmarish parodies of lotus pads, their small hollow structures in the middle already apparent.

-‘Dead Sages Lanterns’, she shuddered in her mind.

Those were arguably more dangerous than the soul setting or seizing ones. Fortunately, they were rare in comparison to almost every other type she knew of, even Moon Mushrooms. Unfortunately, there were now several hundred emerging across the pond. The nature of how they killed; by illusion and insanity, made her nervous that the particular brand of immunity they seemed to have might not work there.

*Fsssssssshhhh*

Behind her, the splotchy red star mushroom trees in the colony shivered and a huge cloud of glowing firefly-like spores swirled up into the air. They twisted and drifted hypnotically before starting to settle across the back half of the hall. Before her eyes, thousands of exploding mushrooms bloomed in the eerie glow from the eldritch mushroom spores that coated most of the walls and floor.

As one, the mushrooms started to rapidly mature, feeding off the ambient qi and death qi from the destruction of the spiders. Within seconds the qi density in the room had rapidly shifted and she could feel a dull oppression in the air that made everything seem slightly vicious. Arriving beside Sana and tossing a final few spiders into the relevant piles she grimaced as even the symbol seemed to become a bit sluggish.

“It seems we are outstaying our welcome,” her sister signed, putting the finishing touches to the array before them.

She already knew the symbol would have limits, the thing was, she had to acknowledge with growing trepidation, she didn’t want to find out about those limits right here and now. The symbol symbolled in a faintly apologetic manner to her worries suggesting somewhat that it was only one of them.

“You know” looking around she covered her own unease sharing it pointlessly with her sister, signing back “I’ve just had a really unnecessary revelation about the evolutionary ecology of Moon Mushroom colonies in the Yin Eclipse mountains.”

“No shit Great Sage of Shu,” Sana continued drawing her formation/array but with more urgency putting several strokes later she gave it one final circuit checking for errors. “And Done. We will need to activate this together.

Nodding, she took her sister's hand and they both knelt down by the nearest point and pushed their qi into it. Energy from her body flowed out of her like the bottom of her qi reservoirs had just fallen out, draining away rapidly. Almost as fast as her body could drag the dense, suppressed qi of the spider queen through her body once and then feed it straight into the array.

“And done!” her sister's nervousness had been palpable during the process. “Now we throw as many spiders on that as we can in the next 30 seconds then we are gone from this hall.”

“What will it do?” she asked as she grabbed spiders and starting throwing them one after another at the main pile.

The overall shape contained 17 nodes, in a broadly octagonal shape, with nodes in different elements linking together in a spiralling fashion that suggested that they would keep feeding around so long as there was qi connected to it to fuel it, manifesting the effect of each symbol to feed the next one in the process.

“Some kind of cyclical elemental effect?”

She plucked up the thorax of a soul formation spider and tore out its core, surprised that it wasn’t contaminated she shoved it in her pack and slung the creature over with the others. In their haste, there was no point in bothering with removing them for the most part, but it was a shame to waste ones that had somehow escaped being compromised.

“What I said before,” her sister signed. “Roughly the same thing that happened to the room with the water in it… but hopefully bigger and better. I think we really don’t want to be here when it does it.”

Sana also hurled the largest spiders she could find at the pile. Counting down in her own head she guessed it was almost time to go. Glancing at the array one final time, her sister validated her thoughts by turning and pointing to the long tunnel.

“We go. NOW!”

She could feel the qi shifting around the array palpably now. Slowly gathering momentum behind her, even as she sprinted after Sana. After a dozen paces, she threw caution to the winds and triggered her movement art to help overcome the unnatural viscosity of the space being manifested somehow by whatever the mushrooms were doing. The process of actively using the art made her limbs feel like she was running knives through them. Her meridians were close to bursting from the Spider Queen’s qi

They both made it to the entrance and plunged into the tunnel, and she breathed out as the oppression of the qi in the room lessened. Behind her, however, the array was still drawing in qi. Shaking her head she triggered her movement art again and they both blurred down the corridor into the gloo-

Returning to consciousness, in a scree of rubble, she lay there in the dark checking her condition, listening to the sound of distant rocks falling and occasional tremors that were still travelling around. Nothing was broken thankfully, and the qi forced into her body was still stable, so that was also good. Her recovery was such that she was pretty sure she could survive anything short of her head getting smashed or her entire body being dismembered. That said, the limits of limb recovery were not something she wanted to test.

The Qi density in the air was dozens of times higher than it had been, to the point where it was interfering with her ability to move as she struggled free of the debris. The sound of shifting rock nearby made her tense until she picked out Sana, also nearby, was responsible for the noise, sitting up as best she could and surveying the ruin behind them.

She was surprised at how close they were to the hall itself, barely a thirty metres down the tunnel, which was now riddled with collapse and detached wall panels. Despite that, the damage itself was really not that big. Much of what they were caught in was detritus that had been swept out of the hall or already damaged sections of wall and masonry that had come with them. looking about, the damage also largely confirmed her earlier musings about this place being clad in the qi repelling stone had been pretty much spot on.

In the distance, the mushrooms of the hall itself were tens of thousands of flickering candles, burning with an eerie five coloured fire that seemed to be both there and not. Looking at it with her qi enhanced vision turned everything into a haze of misty fog and twisting qi’s that made her skin prickle just looking at them. Shutting it off, she watched some of the mushroom candles visible to her as they withered away slowly but surely, the flames feeding on their qi until it was exhausted. When a mushroom ran out of qi, the flame would spin in the air for a bit then scatter, falling to the ground where it would melt the floor for a few moments before finally vanishing with faint *pop* and a ripple in the surrounding air. Under her qi enhanced vision, those flames that scattered became part of the haze of exotic and esoteric qi’s drifting in tendrils through the room.

Struggling to her feet, she pushed her way forward a bit. She made it about halfway to the hall before the density of qi in the air made her progress impossible and she was forced to kneel there panting with the effort of moving even a single step. The tides of orphaned qi that rolled around in its midst had to be tens if not hundreds of times as dense as here. Under her qi sense, the shifting currents gave her a dangerous vibe like nothing else had so far, not even the rock spikes of the grey ape or the attacks of the mushrooms or the spider queen compared to it. With it came a certainty that she would be ripped to pieces and turned into a red smear if she came into contact with any of them.

Thankfully, though, it seemed like the plan had worked, in that the Eldritch Moon Mushroom colony was a broken ruin. It had taken most of the brunt of the impact, and its remaining mushroom caps all burned with flames of multi-coloured fire, slowly but surely withering it away. Even the miasma like qi field around it seemed to be on fire, shrouded faintly in a corona like blade of myriad colours

Staggering forward, her sister sat down beside her and took in the ruin before them.

“If you shift qi feeding through multiple unstable states you can create a temporarily self-sustaining reaction where any qi the blast from the array comes into contact with will turn into its next sequentially most unstable type.” Sana winced and rubbed her head. “I think I may be suffering Qi-strain as well… how are you doing in that regard?”

Considering her own body, her damage to her meridians wasn’t that bad, the activation had put a lot of strain on them both, but it wasn’t close to the injuries dealt by the moon mushroom colony or the grey ape.

“As well as can be expected,” she replied eventually, with a weak laugh. “As you said, a big explosion that doesn’t stop until it runs out of things to easily explode…”

“And in a room with hundreds of thousands of spider corpses and so much Qi in the ambient air you get a –very- big explosion and some very weird after-effects it seems,” her sister giggled.

“You just killed off one of the alpha predators in the whole of Yin Eclipse, with a basic formation go boom nono…”

Saying it out loud didn’t help rationalise the scene of destruction much but did make her feel a bit better.

Looking around at, mainly her handiwork, her sister smiled for the first time in quite a while. “The multicoloured fire of all-devouring doom was outside my expectations, but then again I was knocked unconscious the last time I tried a cruder version of this with the sludge bone pit…”

“Maybe this happened there and we were just out for so long that we didn’t see the fire?” she suggested.

“Yeah, as concerning as that is, it would explain why there was no water and the mud was boiling at any rate…” Sana murmured and then winced.

Looking at her, she could see qi shifting weirdly in the air around her sister as if it were trying to escape. The qi from the spider queens core. She had been cognizant that it was trying to run out from under the symbols thumb in her own body for a while now as well. What they had done, in transferring all its remaining qi into their bodies directly was pretty much only doable because of the symbol keeping it totally in check. It wasn’t in any kind of reservoir, or even in her meridians, her body was literally a compressed jar of unrefined qi at this point, her capacity recovering almost as soon as she spent any qi. She was pretty certain it was the main reason they had been able to safely activate an array of that size. Despite that expenditure, it had barely made any dent in what she was barely holding in her body.

“It seems like we need to deal with the core’s qi,” she observed with a grimace.

“Yep, if we put it off any longer this will be a problem,” Sana said, eyeing the greenish veins that were starting to ghost on her body.

“Well this is probably the safest place to do it,” she said with a dark chuckle. “This is now probably the safest place to actually do It.”

With a wince, Sana struggled over to the wall and sat down on a rock with her back to the surface. “True, true…The colony appears to have bigger immediate problems than us.”

Her own condition wasn’t much better than Sana’s truth be told, but she had no qualms about letting Sana take the first round of refinement. For her part, she struggled over to a nearby rock with a good vantage point of the tunnel behind them and settled down to watch in case anything had survived by some stroke of ill-fortune.

As they alternated their turns, she spent her time skimming the jade scrips and considering their successes and frustrations of the last few… well the last while. It was a minor miracle that they had made it this far. The lack of any offensive arts beyond their movement techniques and a few simple weapons techniques was a problem right now.

It was around the point of their 5th round of refining that she found herself wondering if the stone slabs that had lined the wall were sturdy enough to turn into weapons. Speculatively she got a few likely lumps and tried knapping a stone blade out of some of it. That was a useful bit of knowledge they had all been forced to learn early on. Weapons got lost, so you had to make do occasionally, and qi stone made just as good arrows as most metals did. She did this for a full twenty minutes before slapping her head and retrieving the Arborundum leaf from beside Sana with an embarrassed shake of her head.

Looking back on it, she really should have brought the other one, broken or no. Truly a wasted opportunity there, not that there was anything to be gained from lingering on it now. It took a fair bit of poking around in the rubble to find the type of stone she was after. Not all of the hall had been made with that particular stone. Looking at it in detail, quite a bit of the rubble seemed to have come from up above, where there was some evidence that a vertical drop door on the entrance to the hall had been disabled and torn down. She guessed that was the spiders doing, either to get into this tunnel or out of it. In any case, those slabs were all made of the qi repelling stone, and the least broken of those to hand.

Finally finding a slab that showed no outward signs of being broken she carved a 40 centimetre bit off one end and set to work with the leaf, intending to make a crude blade. For all that its edge was razor-sharp, the process was somewhat difficult. The sharpness of the leaf frequently worked against her, and the risk of cutting herself on it was somewhat above average as she tried to control what she was slicing and shaving off.

The first few she made too thin, the next she accidentally weakened the blade, the 6th was okay but the balance was off and she messed up the handle trying to fix it. Finally, after the eighth one, she got something she was happy with and swung it experimentally, executing a few basic forms as best she could recall them. The weapon felt somewhere between a sword and blade in many respects. Its weight was comparable to a military blade even if its shape was broadly that of a two-handed Jian sword. Out of her immediate circle of acquaintances and friends, only Juni had learned proper qi based sword arts. Han Shu probably knew a bit, given his families connection to the town military authority, but she had rarely seen him practice if at all. For them, their father had taught them these basics, but he had professed his specialism was spears, and then light blades as a backup, so that was where all their training in the last few years had lain, in short blades, as spears were not that useful up in the forests.

She played around with the sword for a while longer, before remembering that she had witnessed a fairly extensive set of basic sword arts… the forms Elaria had been practising, which they had recorded in their entirety.

Feeling a bit silly for not having thought of that earlier, she took another long bit of the slab she was cutting up, horizontally this time rather than vertically and started over again.

The end result was, looking at it, pretty crude. Around 110 centimetres long from tip to pommel, it was somewhere between a Jian and the sword from the recordings. Six centimetres wide and two thick in the middle, tapering to a somewhat more rounded point than Elaria’s because she was concerned about it breaking. Carving the edges was somewhat fraught, but she managed it without any mishaps, and in the end was left with a sword that, while a bit heavier than expected, was quite serviceable and as balanced as she was probably going to manage, having extended the handle a bit to compensate for not being able to thin the blade any more.

A mortal would have been unable to do anything with it probably. It probably weighed 40-50 kilos at least, close to 100 jin.

Testing it on some spider corpses, she was pleased to see that her earlier tests bore out and it easily chopped up soul foundation shell and, after a bit of rooting took limbs of a nascent soul spider mother just as easily. The stone wasn’t damaged by the ichor either, and fresh-cut as it was, with its fine grain, it had an appealing blue-grey lustre. Running her hand along the edge with a bit of caution also confirmed that it retained its mild qi repelling quality. If there was a downside, she couldn’t push any Qi into the stone itself. Still, the Qi repelling was useful enough in its own right down here.

Satisfied with that, she set it aside and also fashioned two short blades and some daggers for both of them. They really should have done this immediately upon arriving here, even the basic stone was pretty durable and would have made decent knives. It would have saved so much hassle.

Finally, once she was finished making the sword, she imprinted the majority of the scenes of Elaria practising the sword forms into her mind’s eye. This was a lesser-used function of them, mostly for maps, and not ideal because it put a lot of strain on your qi reserves to support the process. Then again, she had qi to burn, she reflected drily as images settled into her mind as new ‘memories’.

She had just finished this process when Sana finished her current set of cycles and opened her eyes.

“I see you have been busy…” she looked at the small pile of weapons.

“Yep. Was really stupid that we didn’t do that earlier given how useful the leaf is,” she sighed.

“True... Then again we have barely stopped since we landed in this fate thrashed place,” Sana stretched and jumped.

“Did you make any progress with symbols?”

“A bit... I got side-tracked by the weapons, and memorising the images of Elaria training in those sword forms,” she shrugged apologetically.

Sana picked up the long sword and swung it experimentally... “Surprisingly heavy for its size…”

“Yeah, just the hazards of that material it seems. If it survives well enough I’ll try to make a lighter one. I made you some daggers, but you will probably want to mess about with them yourself,” she added, settling down by the wall.

Meditating on the recordings from the scrip was a strange experience in that it seemed to take both a long time and not very long at all. Awareness of her cultivation cycles was a blur in the back of her mind, however the experience of standing in the moment, as Elaria, memorising every nuance of action that she could felt like it stretched to days as she relived those practice sessions in real-time. Resurfacing she found Sana working on purifying some of the cores from monsters dead in the corridor. There was still boiling around them, just as it had been before, and the colony had still not succumbed to flame and fury, which was a pity, but the damage was being done which was something, and with each period of refinement, she could see the hold it held on the rest of the hall lessening.

Swapping with her sister, she started to practice the basic motions she had been reliving in her mind’s eye. It was very mindless; Step, Cut, Block, Pivot and turn, Strike up and Step, Cut Down and Step, Step Off the line and Block up, Block Down and so on. The full form took almost an hour for her to run through from start to finish and by the time she was done, she found that she was perspiring due to the exertion.

Repeating the form after recovering, she observed the same thing for a second time. Copying the movements became increasingly strenuous as she flowed through movement after movement. At the conclusion, she checked her qi and stared blankly. Almost two percent of the remaining unrefined qi from the Spider Queen had been refined just from doing the form. Out of curiosity, she repeated the form again, this time actively asking the symbol not to do anything at all and just focus on keeping the spider’s qi in check. By the time she finished the form a third time, which was no more or less strenuous than before, it had used up… and purified into her Dantian just under one percent of the remaining qi held in her body.

Stopping to recover a bit, she considered this. In many respects, it was unforeseen spirit stones falling out of the sky. The martial form that Elaria had been practising was almost as good at refining qi on its own as the symbol was, cycle for cycle. The length of the form took longer but breaking it down in her head, there was really not much between them as a ‘complete’ cycle required qi to be distributed through all 206 bones in her body. That was close to forty minutes at the moment. By that measure, it would on the face of it be better to do this, she realised, while letting the symbol work actively as it had been to cycle her qi.

Standing up, she tried again, letting the symbol do its thing and this time also focusing on cycling qi herself. By the time she was done with the full form, she had to sit down and recover herself properly, because her body was burning and her metabolism was running on overdrive, nearly three and a half percent of the qi had been used up this time, purified and reduced, building up the size of her reservoirs in her bones. The process was also having a subtle influence on her meridian strength as well.

A further cycle basically confirmed it in her mind. This sword art accidentally stumbled across was a fate trashed Martial Cultivation art. Such cultivation techniques were known to her, they were also rare, much sought after and difficult to purchase with money from auction houses. They came in several forms. The most basic, a precursor to them were empty hand movements used to attune children to the flow of qi in the world and awaken their senses to it. The more advanced versions were associated with two distinct types of practitioner.

Empty hand forms of ‘Martial Cultivation’ tended to be practised by Buddhists, Body Refinement experts and Dharma Cultivators, however, they were most famous as the foundation for those walking the Path of the Sword Immortal. In either instance, they used specific, auspicious movements to stimulate qi in the body and give rise to natural effects that could be amplified by repeated practice. They honed intent, leading to the foundation of martial intent within the body, improved reaction times, enhanced skeletal structure so on. There were one of the strange points where Body Refinement, Dharma Cultivation and Spiritual Cultivation met, and they had a lot in common with Physical Cultivation and the way Mantra’s worked, now she was watching it work.

She repeated the form again, as fully as she was able. The moves felt a bit empty now she focused on them more clearly. Unsurprising really, given she was functionally just copying the movements and not really ‘understanding’ anything about it at this point, relying on the symbol and her own grasp of Intention from before her cultivation was returned to the start to fill in the gaps.

Another repetition, by which point Sana had awoken and was watching her pensively, solidified that thought in her mind. She was very lacking, but even just following the movements and the rhythm of the form enhanced the power of the symbol. Or perhaps the symbol was adjusting its methods to take advantage, either could be the case. Each form took a noticeable chunk out of the qi in her body as well. At the current rate, she might well fully deplete the Spider Queen’s qi in two days, accounting for extra qi that was being drawn in from their surroundings.

Something about the simplicity and the directness of the form was also appealing to her as she learned more about how it flowed. The footwork was sharp and incisive, all about entering and opening up weaknesses in opponents. The blade never left the front arc of her body, its motions as much a shield between her and any aggressor as a blade to cut at them. That aspect she recognised in their father's footwork with spears as well. Strikes were simple and direct. Their execution and intent was somehow a little instinctive. Drawing openings and snapping at them like some ancient beast. Even, copying as she was, she could feel a sense of subtle inevitability in the way they hunted out or led opponents to weak points. There was none of the whirling showy nature of many of the sword arts she had seen, then again few cultivation sword arts were about hitting things with your sword, and more about flow and control of space and the direction of your qi and intent.

Perhaps an onlooker would say they lacked a certain aura, but as she visualised opponents attacking her, she grasped that this was not an art that was designed for show. The control was short, sharp…brutal even, never extending outside of the capability of the wielder unless she made some mistake carrying her forwards with every move and drawing opponents onto her on her terms. This was a form for killing, and killing fast.

“You didn’t rouse me?” Sana said, as she finally finished the form.

“No need,” she said a bit apologetically. “It turns out that this sword technique is actually a Martial Cultivation form.” Arai elaborated.

“That’s…?”

“Surprisingly fortuitous?” she supplied.

“Yes…” Sana nodded. “How efficient is it at refining the Qi?”

“Disturbingly close to the symbol itself in efficiency,” she said, sitting down and setting the sword to one side. “If I focus on it fully it's taking between three and four percent of the total qi in my body per execution and using it to temper and expand my foundation.”

“So almost a third again on top of what I am currently gaining,” her sister mused. “Given your condition now, it’s quite harsh on the metabolism and body, for the apparent simplicity of what was being done.”

“It is, yes,” she agreed.

Sana sat on a rock and cupped her chin with her hands. “What is more remarkable is that that’s three methods that are basically playing nice with each other, a Physical Cultivation Mantra, this Physique and the Symbol, and now this martial form.”

“Yeah…” she nodded in agreement. “Also, their effects are additive somehow or maybe even slightly multiplicative with the symbols refinement capabilities. Just running through the form while letting the symbol run takes about two percent of my unrefined qi reservoir, half from out here and half from the spider queen, and converts it at a rate of about 1 strand of refined qi for eight or nine ‘units’ of qi.

“Uggh, don’t get started with qi units, those are the worst,” her sister sighed.

“I agree there, but it is what it is,” she said with a laugh. “In any case, that’s close to 10% refinement efficiency on qi from a core that’s at least grade eight, maybe even nine. Our mantra before this was maybe one unit in twenty-five or twenty-six?”

“And!” her sister nodded, understanding proper now… “That mantra of mothers was already in the upper end of anything I’ve ever observed anyone else possessing anecdotally, easily double what Ling or Juni’s mantras could do, and close to the efficiency of Ling Yu’s cultivation art.”

“Yep…” she agreed.

“And…” Sana went on, clearly warming to this line of inquiry. “Add in that the qi here also has components we never saw, ever, even in the deep valleys or the few times we ventured up into the inner regions. That said... I’m not sure if that would make it faster or slower. If the qi isn’t as dense and doesn’t have the same aspects.”

“I do agree there,” she said giving the hall another look… “It would be foolish not to think that the speed we are advancing, or recovering perhaps… has a lot to do with the ambient conditions here.”

“Yeah… although, as you said before, at a certain point this all becomes moot,” Sana finished with a wry smile.

“True… we will find out when we hit ‘mantra seed’ again,” she agreed.

“Assuming this isn’t an entirely new method? Call me crazy, but that realm we just passed through felt like it had more in common with Foundation Establishment than Qi Containment or Qi Condensation,” Sana mused.

“…"

"You think we are in Qi Condensation and Physical Foundation again? Not Qi Refinement?” she said a bit dully.

“Well think about it… we went back to scratch, and that last realm, if it was such, was very odd…” Sana said.

Thinking about it, she had to concede that her sister was right. There were a lot of weird little details about this that were just not syncing up neatly. Their bodies had, it appeared, been rebuilt on a fundamental level, so they had lost their previous foundations… well, maybe those numbers matched up. Their recent experiences had made a mockery of her previous thoughts on how fast they would advance. Either way, it seemed mostly out of their hands, which was a little disturbing. Having that happen with Physical Refinement was just… well that was what that realm did, how the system worked. Perhaps this was just how Physiques worked? She knew nothing about them any case, beyond fantastical stories and some offhand remarks from Ling Yu, and Juni.

“Ahhh…” she sighed in mild frustration and fed her overflowing worries to the mantra which shifted them out of her mental focus and did something useful with them. “We will find out when we find out I suspect…probably when we get out of here and can see how all this behaves under own sky.”

“I like your optimism...” Sana said drily.

They both sat there watching the still unfolding transformations in the hall for a few minutes before she continued.

“Well, moon mushrooms and whatever you did in there didn’t kill us...”

“Oh. Don’t make fate play tricks…” Sana cut her off with an eye roll.

“Fair point,” she said with a wry sigh.

There was indeed no reason to tempt fate, it already seemed to have it in for them on some fundamental level she intuitively felt.

“So how close are you to refining all the Qi from the spider?” she asked after a short pause.

“About halfway, I should try learning the martial cultivation method as well probably,” Sana said standing up and testing the other blade she had carved for balance.

Sana picked up the ‘form’ about as quickly as she had, and the possibility to practice it with a partner rapidly sorted out many of the oddities she had been wondering about as she occasionally used shadow forms to try to unpick the intent behind strikes. Within the hall itself, the mushroom colonies were still being exterminated and the main colony was finally starting to show signs of attrition as the array gnawed away at it. Many of the smaller mushrooms within it were now looking starved of qi and its miasma field had finally started to shrink. Passage into the hall itself was still impossible, so they settled for clearing out a few of the more successful colonies sprouting in the corridor during breaks in their cultivation routine. During that time, they heard several distant disturbances that put her in mind of small earthquakes. Distant grinding and tremors, but they always passed quickly, with no sense of what or where they came from other than ‘beyond’ the hall.

Time was hard to keep track of, beyond a dim grasp that a single run through the form took about an hour on average. In the end, they both ran through the forms forty-seven times before all the qi from the spider queen was refined away. Accounting for breaks, she reckoned the whole process took them something like two and a half days before she was confident that she wasn’t a walking qi bomb.

With that imminent concern removed, they were freed up to explore their onward route, such as it was. Much as she had expected, the large passage and its offshoots were mainly spider lairs. Almost all the smaller tunnels that led off it were collapsed, probably deliberately. Those that weren’t, led to halls that were filled with dead spiders and held various odd-shaped dirt and fibrous thread constructions that held thousands upon thousands of spider eggs. Each hall had one or more ‘spider mother’ corpses in it, moon mushroom colonies that had been taking root in them and the egg clusters were also now gently incinerating

On one hand, part of her was annoyed at seeing all those cores go to waste, subsumed by the mushrooms and then combusted by the periphery of the array Sana had set up. On the other, she had to admit to herself that they would have had to harvest them while they were building the array to deal with the central colony to get any tangible benefits for the effort needed. Further along, where the array hadn’t spread, the mushroom colonies were already at a level where they had small, mature clusters. These they destroyed as best they could before moving on, claiming the odd core that had escaped by good fortune in the process.

The chamber at the end of the long corridor was like the other two they had seen. A broad, octagonal space that spanned three stories. The Spider Queen’s own ‘nest’ construction dominated one side of it. The centre of the room held several corpses of large male spiders that were in the process of becoming an awkwardly large colony. They destroyed that with a much smaller version of Sana’s array.

Various trophies were arrayed around the room. Several skeletons nailed to the wall had the look of grey ape demons. A desiccated corpse of a large four-armed creature with three heads was hanging by its feet from the ceiling, suspended by threads. In other places, there were piles of bones in all shapes and sizes, bits of exoskeleton from things that were definitely not spiders. She could recognise centipedes, a scorpion thing, a desiccated corpse that was half gnawed that appeared to be a two-headed dog thing. Elsewhere around the hall, and merged into the nest were moulted exoskeletons of the queen itself. Head and torso shells ornamenting it in ways that constantly made her want to check they were not additional spiders. Their eyes held now ruined cores of creatures and the skulls of various other things.

The whole thing was really quite ghastly to look at. The once-grand architecture obscured with the amorphous, eye twisting constructions of silken fibres, mud and presumably spit or some other secreted fluid. The exits up above were all heavily twisted about, their entrances enlarged artificially. They scrambled up to one and determined quickly that they were likely the ‘nests’ of the male spiders and really quite revolting in their own way.

The only way out that she could see was the eight-sided hole in the ceiling that was the base of a shaft that rose into darkness. There were some conveniently spider sized holes in the vaulting of the ceiling, but she discounted those out of hand. Sickly green glows were spreading from two already, suggesting a very large quantity of spider corpses.

“Well that’s a bit of a headache,” Sana sounded as dejected as she was, staring at the hole in the ceiling.

“Yeah….” She said considering the hole.

The spider queen could probably claw her way up here, as could the spiders. They could likely scale it as well, but it would be arduous and dangerous, using the leaf. The whole thing appeared lined with qi repelling stone as well, so their own inner strength would be of minimal use for purchase

“I guess our options are climb up there or use the leaf to chop a path through the rock to get around the hall?” Sana said eventually.

“Speaking of that… what is that shifting sound? Sounds kind of like another earthquake?”

They had returned to investigating the side rooms off the main chamber when the wave of the distant tremors reached them. This time, however, rather than fading out after a few moments they persisted and slowly transformed into strange, shifting echoes. Making their way back into the main hall, she tried to pinpoint the sounds using her qi senses but got nowhere even as the shifting echoes seemed to get more and more prescient. Eventually, standing in the middle of the room, they found themselves staring up at the hole in the roof. The shifting sound of stone moving against stone echoed dimly all around the space.

“In a sewer with lots of water in other places… what would you do if someone blew up a colony of moon mushrooms out of a desire to make the whole place a mess?” Sana said distantly staring upwards…

“Purge it with fire personally… but failing that…” she stared at the hole in the roof. “Probably find a reservoir and dump it down here, if that was possible. Water won’t kill the mushrooms but it would stop the spread…”

Sana looked back at her. “And if I was really lucky I might get whatever did the moon mushroom colony in as well... without ever getting my metaphorical hands dirty…”

“Those virgin defiling nameless worshipping grey apes!” she swore.

Without any further preamble, they both turned and sprinted back down the corridor channel towards their ‘basecamp’ sweeping up their kit which has been augmented with the least icky bits of spider silk they could find. They distributed the sword, blade, four daggers and such into their packs, affixing the crude scabbards for them as best they could.

“It will be hard getting through the hall, but nowhere else has a way up except through here it seems,” she said grimly, eyeing the hall ahead of them.

“And that shaft has flood hazard written all over it,” her sister said grimly.

Inhaling she stepped into the room and warily started to struggle through it. The density of qi in it was still immense, even if it was beginning to diffuse. The main reason they had avoided it so far were the shifting tides of qi that still roved around it like malevolent elemental spirits, wearing down the mushroom colony.

It took agonising minutes, with the shifting and now rumbling growing more obvious by the second, to stagger around the edge of the room. The collapse at the far end was impossible and had closed off the other main exit out, which left only the exits on the gallery layers, which she had to hope were not just dead-end complexes. The first layer turned out to be exactly that, she could tell with her qi perception alone.

It took far too long for her liking for them to climb the wall and get to the second level. They had to abandon their route twice for swirling clouds of lightning qi that rolled around like little dragons. The first tunnel they arrived at was chocked full of spider corpses and a moon mushroom colony. The second, however, while also filled with corpses and mushrooms appeared passable and just led off into the darkness with a few side rooms.

Looking down, the remaining elements of the colony had all grown dank yellow coloured rills. The fire was still burning, but there was no guarantee that the array would survive being flooded out if everything in the corridor was swept in here. Moon Mushrooms could survive underwater just fine, even if their spores would be badly dispersed. However, the appeal of sharing turbulent water currents with a few billion spores that could bloom into Dead Sages Lanterns was somewhere between ‘nope, never’ and ‘cursing the fates to sell their own ancestors’.

Fortunately, between the luminescence of the mushrooms and their own qi vision, it was easy to avoid disturbing the soul setting colonies without slowing from a running pace. Not many had made it onto this level, and the majority had been eradicated by the array. Those few that had, were focused on capturing corpses rather than putting down roots.

The grinding stopped behind them when they had made it about four hundred metres down the tunnel. The silence that followed was somehow even more worrying than the noise. They had made it another two hundred metres when the distant rumbling started. At first, was like an echo of an echo, but within mere seconds it had transformed into a palpable rumble, then a tremor and then finally the entire tunnel started to resonate faintly.

Neither spoke as they both broke into a flat out run, rapidly arriving at another hall. This one was also coated in moon mushrooms growing on spider corpses.

“Good fates, how many of these things were there?” Sana swore dinking around a huge spider mother, close to the size of the one they killed initially that was halfway out of a square shaft in the floor.

“Enough it seems,” she pointed down one of the side channels. In it was a corpse of a huge spider. It was maybe a third again the size of the Spider Queen and had a deep red and black colouring. It was already well in the process of becoming a mushroom colony. Eldritch moon mushrooms the size of their heads were growing out of its twisted form.

Quickly parsing the hall, they picked the biggest channel out and ran onwards even as the rumble behind them resolved into a groaning roar with every stride.

They passed through another hall with a square shaft downwards that even had steps in it. This one also contained a corpse of a similar-sized spider, slumped on its back. At this point. The whole place was actually faintly shaking now.

They finally broke out into a large circular hall, on the lowest level.

“So we really were in the basement,” Sana hissed as they started up the stairs coiling in a helix around its periphery going up at least eight levels, ignoring the collapsed piles of gelatinous gunk that were scattered everywhere.

Bioluminescence coated the water surface in the pool before them like a furry skin.

“If the spores can kill the sludges. They truly are the apex predator of this ecosystem,” she followed after her taking care to avoid slipping with each leap upwards.

Even qi distributed through their limbs didn’t seem to help with the algae down here. It was probably some weird mutate with perks from gnawing on qi resistant rocks.

“Monkeyshit,” her sister snarled as the waterfalls from above started to transform into raging torrents, spewing water down from above.

Moments later, a wave of pressure pushed at her and then water started to pour down from the gloom above, right into the middle of the room. From the very top, if she didn’t miss her mark.

“That’s not good,” she hissed under her breath as they made it to the third layer.

Bits of loose masonry fell from above into the pool with really disturbing *plut* sounds, suggesting water that was far denser than it should be.

“The sludge is still alive?” Sana half stated half asked, glancing over as another bit of rock fell with a splat.

“Probably. It might be able to shield itself in some way from the spores and hide deep down,” she hated herself for even suggesting it really, but the evidence was probably going to prove her wrong if she thought otherwise.

They made it to the fifth layer and kept going. Below them, water was now swirling out of the channel they had entered by and also beginning to pour out of the two entryways on the first level. Spider corpses swirled in the murky water which even as she watched from the corner of her eye began to steam faintly and then roiled in ways that were rather… unnatural.

-So yep the sludge was alive and well.

They made it to the sixth level as the water rolled up below them. Without caring anymore she blurred forward with her movement art, grabbing Sana on the way and took them right up to the seventh. Sprinting around it, something smashed into the wall ahead of them, scattering smoking water everywhere. She got a brief look at a spider corpse that had a coating of sludge on it, before Sana jumped it, and bounded up the stairs. Shooting after her, she barely avoided a lashing limb that aimed to snare her. The eighth level, which was the uppermost one, had two exits. They careered towards the nearest one even as water roiled up to the fourth floor, fed from above and below now in equal measure.

A lashing tendril of steaming ‘water’ and pulverised spider followed them both as they hurtled into the tunnel and then dove into the channel in its midst to get past a colony that had formed on the corpse of a four-legged rat-like creature with five eyes and the kind of maw that only existed on leeches. Struggling up on the other side, Sana grabbed her and helped her back out. They jumped up and kept sprinting even as the waters flooded behind them, washing around the colony which shifted a bit but not much. The sludge didn’t follow as far as she could tell. Its route most likely blocked by the corrupting field of the colony and turbulence within the waters.

Even as the water finally caught up to them, the rumbling showed no signs of stopping. Water washed past them, stinging their skin and seeming to drain their qi slightly in a way that the symbol didn’t seem to react to either. Within moments it was above knee height. Shaking her head, she jumped upwards, and pushing qi below her to keep her path steady grabbed her sister's hand and started to sprint along the water’s surface.

“Fates get-!” her voice was lost in the noise all around them.

“We can only keep this up for twenty or so minutes I think before we are out of qi entirely!” Sana’s thought echoed in her head.

“And that is with everything we have focused on replenishment …” she agreed grimly.

The unspoken thought there was that the tunnel was already a third full of water and they were nowhere close to keeping abreast of the wave which had swept past them. The currents were starting to grow choppy as well, suggesting multiple sources of flooding in various directions.

It was with trepidation and a pounding heart that they finally made it into another huge hall. This one was octagonal, with a bunch of statues set into its walls. The centre was littered with the corpses of hundreds of four-legged rat-lizard-leech things that were sprouting moon mushrooms. Water thundered into the room from all eight exits and flooded towards the hole in the centre of the room that was partially open. The nascent moon mushroom colonies had gotten enough of a grip on the biggest corpses to keep much of it anchored in place, but the draining attraction within the room itself almost made her think that the hole was attracting water somehow?

Sprinting across the surface she could feel something inexplicable dragging on every footfall now. A strange qi in the water that didn’t make the symbol react and never entered into her body.

“This is bad!” Sana’s voice echoed in her mind.

“Tell me about it, whatever’s going on with the water is like chains around our legs.”

It was slowing them down just enough that there was a very real risk of them getting caught and swept down.

“And that stops us getting out!” Sana’s thought had a hint of panic now.

Grimly, she watched the surge take the water over the top of the tunnels. The snaring attraction on their limbs and by extension the twisting drain on their qi from the water intensified and within moments there was a spiralling current in the room. Rapidly it became a gyre then a proper vortex.

She was naively wondering if this could get any worse, as the ominous shifting of stone and rumbling somehow intensified. Almost directly overhead, and all around the hall, circular sections of the vaulted roof of the chamber they were almost level with started to spiral outwards and open. More water rushed out pushing the current further towards the centre and speeding its rotation noticeably.

Hissing in frustration, her sister, who still had the leaf blade, stabbed it into the masonry rapidly, carving out proper handholds for them. Letting Sana lead the way, she just focused on holding on as they started to climb, ripping handholds to keep them close to the wall as they went.

Cursing all mushrooms and the effect they had on people she leapfrogged Sana, who grabbed onto her back and let herself be carried upwards. With fresh arms she kept hauling them upwards, rising with the waters until they arrived after a few agonising minutes at the octagonal hole in the ceiling.

Water rolled down its sides like torrential curtains, the current cutting horizontally down in a way that was deeply unnatural. The drain on her qi was becoming so fundamental that it put her in mind of the draining pressure of the vale before their transformation.

She stimulated the symbol which quivered reluctantly and tried to absorb Qi and couldn’t just like it was suppressed.

“Suppression!” Sana hissed in her head, even as she reached the same realisation.

“The water carries a suppression…”

She wanted to hit her head on the wall, it was obvious when you thought about it.

“Not that we had time to think about it,” Sana grumbled in her head, a reminder that their conversation was thought now.

Their cultivation bases, mediocre as they were, were being suppressed. They could still use qi but something was flatly stopping any and all attempts at absorbing qi from this environment.

“A counter to the moon mushrooms?”

“Probably,” Sana thought.

Thinking of them, one plummeted out of the dark above and smashed into the water, fragmenting apart in a spray of green/white mushroom bits on impact. One of the smaller caps weakly turned a striped yellow and exploded in a small cloud of golden dusty spores, right before their eyes.

Fortunately, the water swept them all down immediately and none remained airborne or on the surface.

Other things were starting to plummet as they kept stabbing the leaf into the wall to anchor themselves as the water level rose and they were forced closer and closer towards the opening and its riptide waterfalls.

A grey demon corpse, a small one? Half covered in white fungi roots.

A snake-eel thing that was also growing mushrooms joined it moments later.

More spiders…

A thing that might have been a centipede with really long legs that was almost as big as the spider queen.

And millions of luminous spores, glittering like stars in the ocean at night.

All of them were dragged down into the depths of the room and the vortex below them.

“That’s… a lot of carnage,” she noted with a hint of awe as another of the rat things plummeted down and vanished in a red bloody blur.

“If we survive, I regret nothing!” her sister hissed in her head.

“If we survive…” she pointed out grimly, as they were forced yet closer to the lethal walls of water.

“Well, I guess we get to find out how sheer the waters are,” she said grimly, as they spidered their way across the roof.

This close it was possible to see that the curtains of water were not continuous, there were gaps on each corner, suggesting that they were flowing down channels in the shaft. Arriving at one, she hissed with exertion and stabbed the leaf laterally into the rock. The water was icy on her hands and held the same draining suppression as the water below her.

Fortunately, the worst possible circumstance didn’t come to pass, and the water finally reached the top of the room, carrying them into the shaft through the metre-wide gap between the downward sheets. In the shaft, the waters swirled ominously in the middle as they were carried up. At this point she basically cut in diagonal gouges with the leaf, holding it with both hands while Sana took care of keeping them held to the surface as they rose.

It was grim, agonising and desperate work as they rose through the gloom. There was no question of wasting qi on stuff like perception or enhancing vision. Corpses continued to rain down the shaft and get sucked away into the gloom, even as the downward current started to swirl in on itself.

“Please don’t form another vortex… please don’t form another vortex…”

Her sister's thoughts in her head had somewhat merged with her own at this point, even as the waters behind them started to show the beginnings of another vortex. The darkness grew more intense above for a brief second and then they suddenly exploded out into a cavernous, relatively bright space.

She barely managed to keep a hold of the Arborundum leaf as they rose over the edge of the hole into a vastness that defied logic.

The waters swirled around and kept rising, forcing her to leap vertically onto the top of the octagonal embankment. In every direction, water surged. A reservoir, with walls visible maybe a hundred metres away, its roof stepping up above them.

Before the water could overtake the embankment they had arrived at, she leapt off it, onto the water and used her movement art to cover the distance to the wall and the walkway around it. Behind them the water surged and continued to rise, covering the embankment and swirling in on itself fed by huge chutes on each face of the reservoir.

In the distance, on the far side of the reservoir, she could make out a taller, eight-sided construction set against one wall, with a risen platform. On it were large, greyish figures, hard to discern in the gloom, working away at something with a large tunnel behind them.

“What now?” Sana asked her as they stared around.

In the distance, the decision was made for them, as distant figures pointed and she felt her skin crawl inexplicably. The intense draining was still there even as the waters rose to the level of the chutes feeding this place and the walkway they were on.

“Out one of the channels,” she said, rushing for the nearest one.

Stabbing the leaf into the wall as she ran to keep purchase as best she could, they dashed through the wall and made it out into another… immense space.

Here, it was not gloomy, at least not in the same way. The sky above twisted with leaden storm clouds, maybe a mile above them. Thunder rumbled, barely audible over the crashing waves and shrieking winds tearing up the water they were now running across. Lightning that flickered through the sky provided her with some distant illumination through the haze, striking distant rises that could have been a shoreline.

The entire storm was focused on the place they had been, a giant octagonal construction of water-worn dark stone. The waves as they fled from it were almost taller than them, the intense draining still ramping up.

Something, a twinge of instinctual warning from somewhere, perhaps the symbol, prompted her to make them dodge left.

She had the barest chance to see some snake-like appendage closing around nothing before it sank back in a cloud of spray and surge.

“Nearest shore is that way!” Sana pointed over her shoulder.

Nodding, she made for it as fast as she could, forming focus in her mind for her movement art.

“On three. Movement art!” she thought and got an affirmative from Sana who started feeding her qi.

“Three, Two, One… Go…”

{Flickering Steps}

The qi in her body rebelled as the symbol and the mantra both struck against the draining chains rising up from the water. The world twisted around her and she travelled almost three hundred metres, taking her maybe a quarter of the way to the shore, or whatever the distant outcropping was that she could just make out amid the waves and the rain that was now falling.

Something exploded out of the water behind them and surged after them.

[BREAK!]

The roar was unintelligible, but the word that smashed into her mind, their minds directly was certainly not.

The symbol pushed back against it. She could feel its fury and frustration even as the qi in her body turned turbulent. It had protected her mind, but failed to safeguard her qi. Her momentum broken they both crashed into the water, drawn down by a raging current that pulled back towards the octagonal construction at a speed that made her bones creak.

Something snapped up underneath them and she saw teeth flash by and a huge devouring force pulled them both in. instinctively she stabbed the Arborundum knife into the side of the maw and let it catch as they were hauled in. Sana stabbed with a dagger that just about cut the tough flesh. The creature in whose mouth they were now in thrashed and howled.

[DIE!]

The words made her consciousness blur directly and all the qi in her body seemed to briefly come unstuck. The symbol howled in rage even as the qi filaments in her bones shivered and tried to capitulate and her dantian warped and twisted as if it intended to break like a compressed egg.

The symbol barely hung in there even as she gouged deeper before her with the leaf.

Abruptly flesh became bone and the entire being shivered, shaking from side to side to try and dislodge them. Sana clung to her like a limpet even as she felt something draw on her qi.

The mouth opened faintly and water roiled in, trying to sweep them down its gullet.

This time she was expecting the attack and pushed the symbol and her mantra as hard as she dared, sharing in its anger and frustration. Both their symbols were fighting in tandem now, their qi pools shared as they fought to free themselves. Sana was stabbing at the back teeth and jaw of the thing, levering at the muscle where the jaw should join the skull.

[~REFINE~]

The intention was so horrific it made her perception of herself directly distort. The symbol grew fuzzy and almost seemed about to fly out of her directly and into the maw of the thing. Her qi drained from her body like it had been holed even as she desperately tried to resist it, courtesy of her mantra.

It worked, just about and she gouged down… no upward!?

Their weird orientation made sense and she carved into the base of the things skull as hard as she dared, trusting to the horrifying edge of the Arborundum leaf to do its damage.

-If I ever got to Celestial Venerate in some future lifetime I am so making a weapon out of this stuff, she declared to herself even as she kept stabbing away.

Everything went weird and a horrifying screech assailed her. Pure instinct kept her stabbing upwards even as the head shook. With a sickening snap, her arm broke in two places. On her back, Sana reached up and grabbed the blade and ripped it sideways, carving a ‘V’ in the bone. Something mushy and gooey flooded over her hand

[~DIE~DIE~DIE~DIE~DIE~DIE~]

The intent hammered into her consciousness but it was a bit weaker than before. Sana carved at the flesh around them, levering open the wound beside her as the pressure started to grow. They were deep underwater now she was sure. The creature opened its mouth and she saw blackness for a moment before it swallowed a massive amount of water.

Unable to hold on they were both swept down its throat.

In their hands, the Arborundum leaf dragged all the way down, opening up a vicious wound in its gullet. Even though the blood was close to boiling, she was gratified at how much of it there was, as they caught veins and maybe even arteries on the way down.

Any sense of catharsis was brought to an abrupt end though when they arrived at what she would for posterity assume was its stomach. Within it, they were immediately subsumed by a liquid so corrosive that it burnt away her skin almost as fast as her diminishing qi reserves could restore it.

Howling in mental fury, she tore at the stomach wall, carving open a wound in a heartbeat that was almost as tall as they were. Sana also started ripping at it with a knife she had somehow retained. Their only other garments now were the remains of the luss cloth that held the weapons, some spider silk and the scrips tied to their arms which were miraculously resisting the torment. Her mind was growing dim, kept focused only by her mantra while the symbol shifted desperately in her mind’s eye trying to break its own chains somehow.

[~BE~REFINED~CURSED~THINGS~]

The words roared into her mind, but they were weaker now? Was the damage they were dealing to it finally taking some kind of toll? Even as she kept hacking away at the tissue it dawned on her that while this creature had vital qi locked away in these organs and its blood, the circulating qi within it was just as repressed as that in her own body, unable to replenish itself.

She had assumed it was the source of the suppression, but things didn’t appear to be quite that simple.

Beside her Sana had claimed the other blade and was desperately hacking at the wound she was making for them to crawl through, sending meaty slivers scattered left and right. After what seemed like an eternity, but was probably only a few more seconds, they successfully ripped open the lining of its stomach directly. Sana struggled through and half dragged her through after, mercifully removing them from the horrible bile. It was replaced by boiling, blistering blood, but she didn’t care anymore, her body could take the punishment it seemed, and the burns on her legs, some almost to the bone, were already healing thanks to her mantra.

Without pause, she slid sideways through the organ cavity and cut whatever was next to it. The whole thing flexed and roiled, making her body creak ominously with the pressure. Muscular contractions rippled all around them as the creature writhed in hopeful agony.

-We can’t keep this up, a terrifying part of her mind hissed.

For a split second, she worried that it was mental dissociation that her mantra was finally failing her on that front, but it was just Sana, who had grabbed her arm somehow.

“Symbol, refine, need qi.”

“…”

She had a moment of frozen brain embarrassment and then she formed a transmutation array on her hand and turned the flesh she was touching into pure qi.

*Thwaaack*

There was a blur of red mist around both of them. Blood and viscera in enough concentration that almost overcame her body’s ability to heal as fast as she could parasitize the qi she had just freed up and use it to heal herself.

[~Die! how can!?! DIE!~DIE?~DiE!~]

The stomach lining beside her was slowly starting to heal itself as the creature's own sealed reserves did their best to battle the twin malignancies that were the Arborundum leaf and the array she had just used. The fuzziness finally receded as the symbol got enough purchase to undo the damage the screams had possibly caused to parts of her that she didn’t want to think too closely about right now. Sana vomited blood beside her and then punched out with another symbol that drew on both their qi. Lightning this time. It sizzled and burned everything around them like a swarm of gnawing worms in the flesh. The roiling monstrosity writhing spasmed unnaturally in its grasp, even as she kept stabbing frantically and clipped…

“Bone?” Sana asked in her head.

The leaf filleted flesh from it with barely any resistance, that came from the qi density in the space and the fact that they were now in a sea of boiling viscera in this organ cavity.

“A rib…” she guessed.

“So that’s why we aren't being crushed by muscles, we are in the ribcage?” Sana’s voice suggested even as she released another lightning array and the creature recoiled again.

“We spent at least two fate thrashed weeks… in… a…”

“Mushroom field?” her sister’s voice said with a hint of sarcasm.

“That’s the thing, I really don’t want to spend weeks in this place until it dies… we are…”

“Let’s just kill it!” her sister said, punctuating that by sending another series of lightning pulses into the stomach wall behind them.

“Give me the knife,” Sana hissed in her head. “I am standing on another organ feels like.”

Nodding she passed it over, taking care as best she could not to stab her sister. Sana sent a mental nod of thanks as she struggled to free the sword from her back, regretting restraining it in quite that fashion. Abruptly searing hot blood that was much brighter in colour and rich in yang qi welled up around them.

“Liver!?!” she almost shrieked in her own head as her qi reserves crumpled downwards for a few horrifying moments until the damage stabilized again.

“Uggh, seems so… that’s …both …fortunate and… not,” her sisters own voice of apology groaned in her mind.

“A perforated stomach is one thing. A perforated liver or spleen was entirely another,” she thought with grim satisfaction.

[~wHYWoNtyOuDIe~]

The roar made her black out momentarily and dispersed all the qi in her body despite the symbols best attempts at resisting it.

“Still alive…” Sana rasped weakly.

Blood had qi… the symbol fought to keep her mind and body intact as she recouped qi desperately. With a sob, she ruined a rib for the second time in as many weeks and pictured the transmutation symbol in her mind, and then inverted it. The wound on the stomach lining wasn’t yet fully healed, so she shoved her hand through into the stomach and triggered it with all the vital qi briefly boiling in her body as the price.

{~Change~}

The word echoed eerily in her mind even as all the qi drained out of her body into it. It was barely, with the ambient chaos all around them, able to spark the chain reaction she desired. The transmutation symbol devoured the lining of the stomach and its energy, unguided by any intent other than to destroy erupted outwards, devouring everything. It was the same as when she melted rocks back in the valley, except this time she ‘knew’ roughly what she was doing.

There was a pregnant pause... and then there was an immense shockwave that ruptured through her stomach. She screamed as the energy rolled all around them, twisting and devouring everything, only to be shocked to her core when it passed by them both without so much as blinking.

The symbol in her head laughed weakly at her surprise and sent her a very confusing series of intentions, even as it drank in orphaned qi to heal her. Sana’s wounds were also healing over in the red haze they were entombed within. All the while, the creature convulsed and convulsed and convulsed again as the shockwave travelled its length presumably and the change followed.

[~DIE~]

There was a final desperate explosive convulsion and accompanying attack. a frenzied hammer blow that bore down on them both and turned her world into a strange twisting morass of misshapen shapes and broken thoughts for an agonising heartbeat that held only her own terror and the symbol barely keeping what remained of them both together and themselves.

The blood they were in started to turn viscous and unstable while the blood in her own body rippled concerningly and her muscles felt like they were expanding and knotting. Focusing as best she could on her mantra, she pushed qi around her body, suppressing the damage that the rapidly changing pressure of the space they were in was doing to her body.

Thankfully, as the convulsions all around them dissipated, the restrictions on her qi absorption also faded away and her starved body started to drink in qi like a parched man just crawled from the desert, pulling her… them… back from the brink of a horrible death, even as her mental energy, and the strain of triggering the symbol finally took their toll and she was unable to move at all as her body slowly put itself back together again in the red, stifling mess of the innards of the dead thing.