Memories of the Fall

Of those figures who walked out of the wreckage of those first epochs, few inspire such awe and terror as the so-called ‘Ancients of Days’.

Most venerated is ‘Spring and Autumn’, who gave men both a creed to revere and a destination to dream of. She left us the gift of a place of rest and reward.

Most mysterious is ‘Original Song’, who led us from the trees and who walked into shadow and silver to await her children at the end. She left them the gift of paths unknown, horizons unseen.

Most feared is ‘Red Dust’, who took all our sorrows to her heart and crafted from them a dance to lead us on, a journey and a destination that we could be more. Her gift, was the promise that the wage of our actions would determine that destination.

Most reviled is ‘Myriad Gifts’, who gave to us the means to excel in all things, that we might better know ourselves and prosper. Her gift, was the choice to set aside the path and seek respite from eternal trial.

Others there are as well among that generation and who have come since. The Conquering King who codified the ‘Principles of Being’ for all to read, the Philosopher Prince who walked the Samsara of Heaven and Earth, our Heavensent Prince of Peace who spoke of Mercy and Morals. But unknowing and unsought for, it is these four who have exercised us most in our endless days and sleepless nights. Who we curse, reject, beg, pray to and venerate in equal measure while holding up these other, later creeds. For their generation attained something not truly seen before or since. A path needing no Kingdom, desiring no Glory and unfettered by the Eternity, and we, as we are today can only envy and hate them for it in equal measure.

For it is we who walked away from them, as much as we wish to deny it, decry it, refute it? It was us, who, with their stolen gifts raised above our heads, the blood of their children still fresh on our hands, the lingering words of their hopes and dreams still echoing in our hearts, who bowed to new masters. Who we raised up in their image, arrogantly believing we had learned everything there was to know, believing that we too, could be the masters of this place.

What arrogance we had, back when the world was young and we did not comprehend the meaning of the gilded cage we had wrought.

Text found within a sealed funerary jar in a Cairo market in 1923 - dated to c. 392 AD

~ Author unknown, assumed to be copied from an earlier text.

~ Arai & Sana – A tower within Sandar Gate ~

They finally found both their jade scrips in one of the rooms high in a high tower, held with a bunch of other oddments. Breathing wearily, she used her Sundering Intent to clean the worst of the gore off her and look around the room that was now somewhat cleaner than it had been. There was no sign of anything else that had belonged to them, though the only thing she really missed were the swords which had started to grow on her. Sana was rooting about on the other side, carefully looking through crates that were stacked between the columns along one wall.

“These clothes of Cailleach’s are surprisingly durable,” she added, considering their condition after she had scrubbed it of the mess.

“Makes sense,” Sana nodded. It didn’t need to be said that they had no idea what realm she was, beyond being terrifyingly powerful.

“No spears…” her sister sighed, straightening up.

She walked over and picked up a halberd with a weird hook-like head and a cracked shaft that lay in the corner. “This might do? It seems to be made of metal, at least… It also has no enhancements or formations on it, however…”

Sana took it experimentally and then shook her head. “The metal feels ‘wrong’, greedy somehow. It interferes with my intent.”

Taking it back, she had to make a few random swipes with it before she saw what Sana meant. It wasn’t the same metal underneath the patina, and it had a hunger that felt odd and unnatural. With a sigh, she tossed it on the table in the middle of the room and returned to looking.

“We should have given all that stuff to the Pezvak,” her sister said, standing up with a sigh and kicking a crude box full of broken oddments and stone tools. “Truly as the sages say, there is no medicine for regret…”

“Hindsight is a terrible curse,” she agreed, but it was what it was. Among all the other problems, it was embarrassing and annoying to have had it stolen away like that, but it was merely embarrassing and annoying.

Arai found herself looking around the room again. They had already found a few broken shields made of now rotted spirit wood underneath things. Most of the crates were a random jumble of this and that – stone weapons and various natural oddments, even a few links and pieces of armour from various materials – however, all of them were suspect in some way. She found another two halberds now that she was looking in this part of the room, the heads anyway, but they were also made of the same metal. The armour itself was beyond any ability to wear as well.

Other boxes and a few shelves held some tomes that gave her a deeply inauspicious feeling and appeared to be bound in the skin of Ur’Inan. She didn’t even dare pick one up, because they tried to speak to them simply by being in proximity. There were some other things as well: Troll cores in another box, all corrupted with the evil, seizing symbol and a few other natural treasures that were thoroughly seized. She had hoped she could refine those, given they had successfully refined living ones, but these ones were just pure, aberrant qi that her Myriad Elements Qi just rejected. Most of the other cores, all of which were of a high grade, were the same.

There was nothing remotely sword or blade-like that she felt any inclination towards wanting to use. The big demons did use blades, cleaver-like weapons, along with hooks that, now that she was considering matters, might actually be these cut-down halberds, or copies of them, and nets mostly. None of those were interesting to her though, and all the ones they had encountered on the way up were barely spiritual artefacts and unholy ones at that.

“Would you credit that Grandmaster Li’s restrictions on this have actually held by the looks of it?” her sister said, having given up and started to check out her own scrip again.

Picking up her own, she shoved it in a waist pouch of the dress she was wearing, glad it didn’t go to her ankles like it would have on Cailleach.

“If we ever do get out of here, we owe Grandmaster Li a gift or three,” she agreed.

“Yeah. He can put it as a sign ‘Buy HERE! My tablets will resist Immortal Devils trying to get at what’s inside! – Guaranteed!’” her sister said with a laugh.

“Or ‘My Tablet Protection formations have saved a reality from doom, maybe’,” she suggested finding that the levity did help. “Nothing else that looks remotely usable?” she asked as an afterthought.

“Nope, it’s all thoroughly corrupted by their seizing principle and continued exposure to this place,” Sana said with a frustrated sigh. “You?”

“Anything that looks like a blade, I guess they used,” she said, giving one final cast around the room.

“At least we can fashion our intent into attacks directly now,” Sana pointed out.

“True, maybe the fates are trying to tell me to form a ‘Sword Heart’ – if only I knew how,” she chuckled ruefully.

“Even what I have doesn’t say anything at all regarding anything like that…” Sana said with a helpless shrug.

Walking over to the balcony – the floor had a large opening out to it – she looked down over the city. There was no barrier over the distant ritual and the pig demons… devils – she now wasn’t sure what to call them beyond refusing to call them by that other ridiculous name – were still rushing thousands of slaves to their doom on the raised steps of the structure in that plaza.

“What now? Do we try to go interrupt it?” she said.

“We will have to cut our way through an army,” Sana observed, peering over the edge.

Above them, thunder rumbled and shivered the sky, lightning flickering down to strike the tallest towers. The storm front had finally arrived while they were fighting their way up the tower, although it had already existed in some way to ‘hide’ the terrible blizzard that Cailleach had summoned before they entered. Its effect were subtle but welcome, helping to cool the fervour that had threatened to well up in her as soon as she started fighting again. The first few minutes had been… disturbing.

“That seemed to be her intention,” she conceded, thinking back to the discussion… well, mostly Cailleach speaking and them standing there nodding, trying to take in what she was saying.

“Do you buy what she said about limitations?” Sana said after a moment.

“It makes sense. Everything she said tallies with what we experienced so far, and the… aftereffects…” she trailed off, shuddering.

“I’m still more concerned about what she was saying in regards to our Physiques,” Sana said more grimly.

“You think it’s too neat an explanation?” she mused. She herself didn’t, although she still got the impression that there was more to it than that for some reason, but what she couldn’t put her finger on at all.

“No… yes… maybe… no…” her sister muttered. “What disturbs me more is that it fits, but if that is the case… is this only going to get worse as time goes on?”

“We can only ask,” she said with a resigned shrug.

“That doesn’t help. I am still…” Sana said a bit helplessly. “Maybe an hour ago we were running away from that… abomination… and now we are stood here with some peerless expert sat up there conjuring a storm so we can kill pig demons to our hearts’ content because she can’t?”

“I believe her when she says that they are dangerous, that there are reasons why they are able to endure here, but it’s just…”

“Too much to take in?” Sana said, banging her hands on the stone balcony edge.

“That as well,” she nodded.

“Well, there is no shortage of devils to kill at least,” Sana said, shifting her Maelstrom Intent and turning a bunch who had just run up to the floor below them to minced meat even before she could shift her own qi to attack them.

“I guess we can only approach it as cautiously as we can,” she said, hefting her borrowed blade. It was surprising that it almost fit better with the Sundering Intent than the sword did.

“It isn’t protected by a barrier at any rate, and the old demons seem really busy with the ritual,” Sana mused.

“I’m still concerned about what she meant by ‘cheating’ on behalf of the pig demons…” she muttered.

“Let’s hope they can’t do anything without a huge backlash,” she agreed before pausing as she felt a more powerful pig devil become obvious about three floors down.

“Another one with a principle…” she noted, observing it from a distance as it started to order some more pig devils around.

“At least those are… less dangerous now,” Sana said, walking back into the room.

“That is true. However, we have yet to meet anything up here that feels like a genuine, eight-star, Immortal realm pig devil akin to those on the palanquins.”

“They are probably not that common, based on what Cailleach noted.”

“I get that…” she shook her head and looked around the room again.

“I can believe we got stronger, and we haven’t really fought any since breaking through, or even legitimately before that I think, but if they are really immortal, 8 star monsters… they are definitely not in the same league as the serpents were,” she turned back to look around the room.

Sana shook her head and looked around the room at its contents as well. “We need some weapons anyway, and anything these things have taken and stashed in here is clearly valuable enough…”

“Or dangerous enough…” she pointed out.

“True…” Sana sighed. “Or dangerous enough…”

“First, though… let’s clear out this tower now that we are nearly at the top.”

And so, they went up one more level to the top and put a lightning array on the roof.

By the time they were done, her soul sense told her that the forces below were massing for a proper attempt at retaking the tower, believing them hemmed in perhaps. It was true that it was impossible to jump off this tower, or fly up it for that matter. They were also using more and more of a certain type of ‘enslaved’ to lead their attacks. The strength of those, she was now coming to appreciate properly, having not actually fought that many – and none like these – before they got to this city. They were less like persons and more like living corpses.

They were devoid of any sort of consciousness that she could see, and their souls had been hollowed out entirely – a process that was bizarre in its own right – and it was now obscured thoroughly by a tangled mass of red runes that made them move according to basic sets of instinctual instructions. They were also immune to any kind of direct, soul-based attack and, when present in large numbers, also conferred this to those around them, like a field.

They were being organized and driven upwards by a small horde of the weaker pig demons with whips and spiked hooks, while bigger ones at Dao Seeking held back, doing something else on one of the lower floors that was shrouded from her by the fog of interference…

“Done!” Sana said cheerfully as she felt her own qi stop being drawn away into the array which was now being activated.

Stepping back, she watched it ripple and then draw in Metal Qi from the storm above. There was a flash of light and heat that made her own qi defences weaken even with the support of the Isolate symbols being used on the six-symbol array and the tower became a lightning rod. She watched with her soul sense primarily as it drew down power from the storm above.

The trip back down the tower, as such, was a lot faster – the array triggered every two minutes or so sending a massive pulse of metal qi down the tower that only those Dao Seeking demons and the strange puppet slaves seemed able to survive, and then only barely. As such they just had to walk down and stab anything that wasn’t dead as they went past, ruining their cores in their heads which were remarkably durable to elemental trauma, she was starting to observe.

“Looks like they are finally properly aware of our presence,” Sana said, staring at the massed ranks of slaves and pig devils that were forming up in the plaza below their tower.

“It would be strange if they were not,” she concluded, hefting the bone blade as a wave of normal devils came screaming into the atrium of the tower.

Taking the vanguard, she cut out with the blade, sending out a sundering wave of intent-infused qi that tore through them and reduced them to a flopping hoard of bisected bodies. Sana followed behind, using her own Maelstrom Intent to finish them off.

Staring at the massed horde, she sighed. Her earlier rage had indeed long cooled – the gnawing dissonance that she had felt emerge over time from it largely banished as well. Cailleach had said little about that, but the more she thought on it, as they walked towards the edge of the field around the tower that prevented flight, her sending them back here had done them a huge service there. Had those thoughts been allowed to fester, rather than being confronted so rapidly, she might have walked into another pit entirely. The emptiness in her that was left by the shock of the previous events would have been filled by that – afforded distance and an unwillingness on a rather fundamental level to confront those torments. She would have buried them, believing that she had severed the darkness thoroughly and never seen when it walked back in wearing a different hat.

The seizing strength of the banners washed over her, still perceivable, but now it held no grasp, not on her, not on either of them. There its influence was truly broken. There were, however… other problems.

“The banners can stop flight?” Sana’s voice echoed in her head. “They didn’t do that before.”

“That seizing, defiling principle seems to be able to pervert a whole lot more than just people,” she agreed. “And it wasn’t doing that when we came in either…”

Without much preamble, she put down a three symbol array that annihilated most of the chaff as they charged through the swirling mists that formed in their vicinity. Sana walked after her, throwing a few of the water orbs from the tome. When she was within a dozen paces of the onrushing horde, she sundered space and went straight for a fat pig devil at the Nascent Soul realm in the middle of the line who was carrying a staff made of severed Ur’Inan limbs.

It died shrieking on her borrowed blade as everything around it tried to flee from the shockwave of Sundering Intent that swept out of her attack, scything through the mob, severing limbs, splitting bodies and most importantly, severing their cores. The difference between Nascent Soul and Quasi-Dao Seeking, or Unity Realm as Cailleach had called it, was immense in that regard. She was still getting a grasp on how quantifiable the change to her qi had been. The three severings had provided a huge leap forward in its purity and the way her ‘Intent’ interacted with the world.

The change to her Nascent Soul was also remarkable in this regard: with its increased density, it was able to do a lot more at once. She hadn’t really moved out of her body to fight, because it was still stabilising, but it was keeping a constant eye on her mental state, with the help of her mantra. In that regard, she was certain now that the soup that Cailleach had given them was not a simple thing at all. Her familiarity with spirit food was pretty good she liked to think, but the aftereffects of the ingredients in that soup, especially the pink-fleshed fish, on her mental state was so profound as to be positively esoteric. It was certainly why she was having such an easy time sorting out all the aftereffects of being in the Defilers’ grasp for so long.

Sana followed behind her, striking out with her borrowed spear – the bone weapon with its longer, broader blade and slightly shorter haft actually seemed –more– suited to her movements than the previous spear, allowing her to cut as well as stab. It wasn’t a sword staff, but it was heading towards a spear staff or a spear-glaive compared to what she had been using–

“Honeymoon over,” Sana’s voice echoed in her head as a palanquin bearing a wizened pig devil carried by four–

“What the fates are those,” she hissed, staring at the four bipedal, horned, grey-skinned creatures. Scanning one with her soul sense she got a faintly fuzzy feeling, but they seemed to be about Dao Seeking.

“Aren’t they the same as the one in the pool in Evergrove?” Sana said.

Thinking back to that humanoid, grey-skinned, horned figure lying in the pond and comparing it, the resemblance was there. These ones, however, were bulkier and had various scarred tattoos picked out across their bodies.

The devil on the palanquin laughed, its voice echoing disturbingly and cutting through the noise of the horde as others all flooded away from them like a receding tide now. It pointed a hooked sceptre at her that was carved in depraved phallic scenes, and her perception of the world around her seemed to narrow for a brief movement until she sundered it, finding that several pig demons had closed in on her unnoticed with nets in the process.

She skipped backwards, avoiding them even as Sana shot towards the palanquin in a space-bending blur–

{Ninhursag Descends}

This time she even got the technique name through their shared connection as Sana crashed into the palanquin, her borrowed spear easily tearing through the barrier and impaling the demon. The shockwave from the collision swept away many of the surrounding combatants and killed any devils below Nascent Soul instantly that were still in the plaza. The demon itself – which was almost certainly a proper Dao Seeking old devil – collapsed like a broken puppet, the spear impaled through its head.

The four grey-skinned creatures bearing the palanquin stumbled and then cast it aside. Recovering, she took the opportunity to send an intent-infused soul attack at one and grimaced as it sank into nothing, proving that they too were this different breed of soulless slave. Closing on one, she cut at it, managing to halfway sever its head before she was forced to dodge its counter attack–

Its compatriot tackled her and she skipped backwards again, using–

Another one caught her with a lunging kick she had failed to grasp, sending her flying across the square and inflicting a significant burden on her qi armour.

Rolling up, she was greeted by another leaping through the air, about to land on her. She cut at it with her intent, trying to sunder the space between them to deflect its–

Shit! she screamed in her head and managed to roll as her intent was shattered like glass and its feet crashed down where her head and chest would have been a fraction of a second earlier.

The shockwave still caught her and sent her crashing into a building, even as one of the horned creatures grabbed a spiked hook and hurled it at her hard enough to generate its own shockwave as it passed through the air. Gritting her teeth, she cut at the hook, breaking it physically with the bone blade she was wielding and continuing the strike with her Sundering Intent. The thrower of the weapon just walked into it and she again saw her intent break like thin glass against its physical body.

“That’s not good,” Sana’s voice echoed in her head.

“Proper eight-star grade… Immortal bodies…” she agreed, sending her soul sense out at one to try to probe it again.

Her probe was rebuffed effortlessly, scattering like water off rock and allowing her to see nothing.

“That’s weird,” her sister noted as she lunged at one, clearly having tried the same thing. “They were clearly Dao Seeking or thereabouts before, and had no hint of this kind of strength?”

Sana’s target adroitly dodged her, stepping on her spear thrust and then sending out a lashing kick. Sana barely held onto her weapon as she was thrown backwards.

Spinning, she took in the others who were regrouping even as more pig demons were flooding into the square from all sides now, pushing a wall of slaves before them. Thunder rolled overhead ominously and another pulse rippled down the tower and dispersed some defenders trying to get around its base to join the fight.

She cast the miasma spell from the tome, overcharging it as much as she could with her qi, burying the entire middle of the square in a sickly green fog. Seconds later one of the grey-skinned creatures erupted through it, aiming a furious punch at her. She hit it with a lightning orb, followed by a fireblast in rapid succession, turning the area around her into a maelstrom of searing, boiling lightning-infused fog.

Sadly, it did little to deter her attacker even as she tried to see where the two not fighting either of them–

One descended from above, stamping down with both feet, aiming to crush her to the ground. She dodged, barely evading that, but the shockwave of its impact turned not just the ground over but the space above it in some inexplicable way. She could only throw herself–

The one chasing after her caught her with a proper punch and sent her into a building on the edge of the plaza, taking a massive chunk out of her qi armour in the process. Scrambling up, she found it leaping after her so fast she could barely follow. It ploughed into the ruin of the building, scattering rock everywhere even as she sundered her surroundings to try to escape, still desperately looking for the third one.

Breaking free of the carnage, she skipped through the air and found that the one that had dropped from above effortlessly rose to match her height, its foot stamping downwards–

Perspective broke as its stamping foot became the whole sky above her, distorting space somehow to trap her no matter how she dodged. Oppressed, she cut out with her all her might using her intent-infused qi. The descending foot scattered it, smashing through it as though it were glass again.

Snarling in rage, she cut again, desperately, seeking for that elusive feeling she had had a few times before, drawing everything she could in her body into a singular defending strike: her qi, her intent, both for her and her Nascent Soul, and the symbol’s own intent. This time, while it didn’t stop the impact, which smashed her into the ground, her strike did manage to deflect enough of it that she was thrown clear rather than be smashed beneath that impossible foot.

It drew its foot up and she found herself facing a grasping punch that held the same properties: always coming for her no matter where she was. She grasped for the same combination again and cut at it harder, but this time her intent just bounced off it and was broken. Her Nascent Soul quivered as the rebound of its strike smashed through her and she spat blood as her meridians recoiled in ways that were not entirely natural.

Confused and disorientated, she grasped instinctually through the fog of the strike and found her mantra. Over time it had become less and less useful, more and more passive – at first she had thought it was because of how their bodies had changed – the symbol had changed the mantra after all – yet it had only grown less and less as her strength grew more. After Golden Core it had still been useful, but since Nascent Soul… it was mostly just a silent thing that moved with the symbol, doing as it always had done. Only once in her recent breakthrough had she actually succeeded in half stimulating something from it akin to how it had once worked.

Even so, it was all she had left, she realised. It was the oldest piece of her power, the origin of all of this even. It was just words now, in her head now… a memory of their mother that she held onto.

‘Spirit. Blessed. Bestow. Body. Day.’

Nothing happened, as she had expected. It just kept on turning as it had before, shifting a little bit to…

In that moment she stared at it, because, genuinely, she had nothing else left to pull on in that moment – trying to find out WHY it was not… and found herself frustrated, inexplicably.

The fist landed and she was sent crashing through a building, her body groaning and her qi armour barely protecting her as her Nascent Soul shouldered some of the burden of the strike as well.

Discombobulated as she was, she mumbled the words again.

‘Spirit. Blessed. Bestow. Body. Day.’

And got nothing, as if…

As if…

Her eyes snapped open in horror as the words that Cailleach had said – the words in your soul cannot be taken, but the vessel itself is still vulnerable at your realm. Her first instinct was the seizing principle of the defilers, but it had been far before that. The serpents seemed possible, but again that was unlikely, she somehow knew instinctually. It had been happening before her Nascent Soul breakthrough… maybe even before her Golden Core breakthrough…

Their mantra had worked in the depths. It had saved them against the spiders… She searched desperately for the oddity, something that would give her a clue as to what she had been looking for…

Two points stood out, her ordeal with the unchained on the pillar… then the moon mushrooms… They had been hunted by the spiders; it had worked just fine then… saved them against the slime with the help of the symbol.

The symbol shifted, and she got a faint burst of frustration, then annoyance from it, as if it had felt something in that moment that she had missed. In that moment she stared at those events again, looking for the incongruity, certain suddenly that she was missing something, somehow. Finally, in desperation, she pulled her cast of her memories of those moments out of the scrip, even as she scrambled out of the ruins of the building – they had put those in there in short bursts after the battle with the slime, in case they died down here, so that someone might find it and see how they died – and saw the grey demon fighting the slime and looked past it disinterested–

If she hadn’t just had several instances of having that exact same thing happen to her in the previous hours, she would have never seen it, she was sure. The grey demon was one of the trolls–

“Overturning Heaven… Nine Demises… Seizing Earth, Fire and Blood… I Deny Your Promise and Take What is Mine!”

The memory of that moment surfaced through the fog of memories she never realised she was missing until she saw them play out again before her, courtesy of her scrip in a singular stomach-dropping moment… and vanished again as she made to wipe the memories from the scrip as they were just–

Her Nascent Soul though, and the parts of her that were more closely knit to the symbol, which were now the driving force behind her foundation, were not so tritely turned aside by a manipulation aimed at someone much weaker than she now was. She screamed in fury as she understood what had happened, presumably to both of them – it was impossible for her to lay the blame there for certain, but the spirit had been so certain they would die down there, it was compelling. Cailleach had even said it herself, she realised perhaps unintentionally: it put strings on them and marked them both for death, not knowing what they were. Whatever the troll had done, those words had somehow slowly started to turn her away from her mantra, not lessening its effectiveness, but lessening slowly but surely her awareness of its presence within her body, until it just became another part of her that did its thing and didn’t cause any fuss…

In her head, she was aware of her realisation sinking into Sana, through the link, accompanied by a vast spike of seething fury.

The question of… her… Cailleach called them ‘Words in the Soul’, not ’Words in the Heart’?

Her Nascent Soul reached out and invoked the mantra, fully and thoroughly, pushing the Sundering Intent through each and every mnemonic, turning them inwards.

‘Spirit. Blessed. Bestow. Body. Day.’

The exercise was a simple one, to familiarise yourself with the words of a mantra for the first time, and shockingly it worked. Her mantra and her Nascent Soul connected just as her physical body had done all those years ago and there was a sense of…

The cage was one of gossamer and suggestion, but it was so subtle for all that. Seeing it undone, she could grasp the evil beauty of that thing, because her mantra had slowly become like a gear spinning in her body that was no longer connected to everything else.

It was like she was being pulled in two directions for a brief, agonising moment as whatever had been done to her body was undone by a wave of her intent-infused qi now working in conjunction, actively, with her mantra.

Above her, the grey-skinned humanoid arrived on the edge of the collapsed building and grasped out for her again.

Her qi rolled through her body and into her Nascent Soul, entering its heart meridian and renewing itself. Flowing into the bones in her Nascent Soul, it swept around that system like a torrent carrying her mantra with it, rapidly re-infusing it into her bones before it was drawn to the symbol in her Sea of Knowledge, wrapping her whole body in a cloak of intent-infused qi. Her mantra connected the Sundering Intent in that cloak to the symbol that was within her Nascent Soul for a singular, unstable second, unifying all of her Intent, the strength of her soul, her mantra and the symbol itself into a blade that cut out and sliced through the oncoming grey hand, splitting flesh from bone and severing it cleanly through the shoulder.

The creature howled for the first time, its voice making the whole plaza shake and then it kicked at her. Its foot blotted out the whole world and she felt qi flow out of her as if she were a broken bucket at the force of the impact. The creature screamed and screamed as it stared at its severed arm, a bizarre half-consciousness in its eyes that was similar to…

“So this is what Cailleach meant by ‘cheating’…” she realised with a sense of horrified awe.

Something was possessing this creature, or controlling it maybe. Its eyes had a greedy, gimlet-eyed consciousness to them that was absolutely that of a pig devil.

It stared at its severed arm in shock and tried… she saw qi shift in it, but it couldn’t regenerate. Its vitality had actually been sundered somehow, removing the idea of an am from its being.

The other, which had gone to attack Sana she realised, broke off that action and leapt for her so fast she only saw afterimages as both feet aimed to stomp on her head and chest simultaneously. She cut at it again–

“What–?” she barely had time to say in mute shock before she felt her body breaking.

She barely managed to get her head out of the way at the last second. The foot went through her chest like a lance, shattering her diaphragm, clipping her dantian and then exuding a colossal seizing, breaking force that ruptured muscles and split apart her physical meridians, even cracking her bones.

The creature had actually pried apart her attempt at forming a principle, breaking and diffusing it into its disparate parts.

She grasped for the words again but they refused, melting away – she swore at them.

“Accept what is given–!” Sana’s voice merged with her mother’s in her memories as she was forcibly reminded what happened when you ‘ordered’ your mantra around.

There was a vast, turbulent oppression all around her that she was sure was Sana doing another art. The words ‘According to Shamash’ drifted through her mind even as she repeated her mantra again as the creature withdrew its foot and tried to sweep a kick at her head. She succeeded this time, envisaging a blade severing its foot, but once again it crumbled and she felt a terrible, jarring pain between her shoulders and the compaction of bone and tearing muscle.

Trying to evade it, she spat a mist of qi from her Nascent Soul’s meridians, much the same way she was sure she must have vomited up shattered inner organs with her physical body.

Part of her wanted to complain that this was worse than the serpent, but actually, she was still not quite Dao Seeking and her body’s durability was actually not much better than it had been back then. She tried to move her Nascent Soul out of her body–

“Yep, they have cut that off as well somehow,” she got a sense from Sana somehow.

Groaning, she just tried to use her ‘Intent’ to get rid of the thing attacking her–

Something – a foot probably – smashed into her stomach, flicking her away like a ball. She collided with a building and, coming to her senses, saw the one-armed creature now descending from above in a fantastical crouched leap, its face a rictus of rage through pink-tinged vision. This time she didn’t mess it up, imagining a sword cutting it down even as she set her mantra to doing what it needed to do. It was like having a lost limb she had never realised she was missing. Something flowed out of her Nascent Soul’s third eye and then her own third eye, punching through the arm grasping down, shredding it even as her body rapidly knit its injuries back together and her dantian stabilised.

Her strike caught it off guard as its attempt at dispersing it foundered and its focus that was preventing her from escaping was broken for a moment.

The creature roared and stomped out at her with its damaged leg, the foot again seeming to always be dropping on her and she cut at it in her mind’s eye. This time, while it wasn’t knocked back… the kick was deflected a bit somehow.

The building still collapsed around her, but she managed to escape quite a bit of the previously punishing damage that came with the stamp.

“May monkeys shit in your bed!”

“May the evil eye of the heavens stare at you always!”

“I hope your cock shrivels up and you get turned into a mushroom!”

She directed a diatribe of curses at it in her head as she focused on re-integrating her mantra back into her body while trying to wield all of the disparate bits into… something capable of keeping her alive, or at least keeping two of these distracted from Sana, who seemed to be faring a tiny bit better than she was.

“Worry about yourself!” came the hurried comment through the link as she felt another shift in the tides of Maelstrom Intent that Sana was wielding to try to snare up the other two.

This time, she let the words of her mantra sink into different parts of her Nascent Soul – something shifted again and the cycle flowed; the symbol’s Transformative Intent, rather than the Sundering Intent this time, was the main focus of the force that travelled out. There was a faint hint of inevitability to it as it resonated with ‘Bestow’ and ‘Day’, and also a subtle undertone of adaptability that came from ‘Blessing’ and ‘Day’ that suggested that no matter what it encountered it would be able to cope – and melt it.

The creature raged and blocked it with its knee somehow, stepping back. Her attack was broken but it had done what was intended and bought her moments to heal.

It sneered and sprung towards her again.

She was still basically unable to move her physical body so she just attacked it directly from her Nascent Soul once more, slicing with the sword that it manifested, feeling the combined intent adapt to the sense of transformation that came from the symbol.

The attacking ‘Principle’ was deflected in the collision and her Nascent Soul was swept back, spitting another small cloud of mist.

{Fury of Enlil}

The creature’s roar was drowned out by a shrieking maelstrom of heavenly death that consumed the whole square – she could feel her sister’s intent within it even as the grey-skinned monster turned–

The lance of lightning and the force that came with it picked it up and cast it through the ruined building they were both ‘fighting’ in, demolished the one after it and then, with a thunderous boom, impaled its torso against the tower they had just exited. A moment later, a flare of lightning from the array at its summit above swept down the exterior, turning the regenerating thing into an incandescent candle.

Her body finally recovered enough for her to draw herself to her feet. Staggering up, desperately casting about for the others, she saw a head and a bit of a neck and shoulder of one lying nearby with blank eyes–

One exploded out of the rubble to her left even as a wave of corpse puppets surged into the square, scrambling over buildings towards them. She grimaced and was about to cut them when it occurred to her that there was another way – this time she visualised a line of phantom swords cutting down. With a ripple, a dozen man-sized swords of her qi and intent swirled out of the void, shaped by the transformative aspects of her intent and linked to her by her mantra that was also now guiding the qi according to her wishes, filtered through the mnemonics.

The attack split the oncoming wave, swords embedding into the ground where they exploded and dispersed in a series of sundering shockwaves tearing the heart out of the onrushing horde. It was impressive and effective… but also, she had to acknowledge, exponentially more draining on her qi than just smacking things with her blade.

“Where are the others?” she asked Sana in her head.

“The one that went after you was the strongest, by far,” her sister replied, gesturing to a body that was missing its legs near where she had been stomped on. “The last one was just watching. I think they had some shared awareness, but after you started cutting one up it went for you and I was able to get the other two with the leaf.”

She glanced at the honorary third member of their partnership and shook her head wryly.

There was another boom and the corpse on the tower was further disintegrated.

“That’s going to be annoying to recover,” Sana said with a sigh as she took stock of what were clearly the first vestiges of her ‘Principle’ that had been formed under the pressure of those frantic moments and the re-discovery of her mantra.

She cut out with it again, watching it… It was impressive, but somehow it didn’t quite feel like it was… hers, and it had been broken apart several times by the grey-skinned enslaved humanoid.

“You said that the pagoda said we had to find something true to us as a principle?” she said, turning to Sana – it was something they had talked a bit about on the way to get the scrips.

“That was what the pagoda teachings said,” Sana agreed, “we have to find something that is unique to us out of all those disparate pieces: what we have and what we severed away and make it into a principle.”

Nodding, she considered the Sundering Intent. It was from the thread, now charm, and the sword art – both of which were things that she had acquired, been given.

By that logic, the mantra also came from their mother. It was hers, yes, but it was also given… was that why using it as the core had felt weird earlier?

Qi was out. It couldn’t be hers even though she was refining it. It was fundamentally a thing of the world, and the world wasn’t ‘hers’ either.

She closed her eyes as the symbol cackled silently in her mind. A thing that was hers, and hers alone.

‘Myriad Transformations Mortal Physique’.

It had been staring her in the face, literally all along. Myriad Transformations Mortal Physique. The Physique was the body… she had been focused on that… then the cultivation side of things was what… exactly…

She was still working her way through that when the corpse puppets commanded by a few distant Nascent Soul pig devils returned. She stood there, letting her nascent ‘Principle’, which was still in a state of flux as she grappled with the last part of the problem of its composition, rip them apart automatically as it swirled around her.

Picking one of the distant pig devils, she focused on it: it was peak ‘Origin Severing’, not even Dao Seeking, and had no principle that she could see. She bisected it, breaking its mana core and its foundation directly, with the Sundering Intent. Even then, that wasn’t quite right.

She could only consider that it was a pity there were no proper Dao Seeking old pig devils around – as torrid as that last fight had been, she had been able to make that remarkable leap because it had wielded a ‘Principle’ against her.

What she had now was just a tool, though; she could feel that more and more as she cut a few others. The other problem was that the ‘Sundering’ and ‘Transformation’ didn’t really connect comfortably; it still felt a bit like mixing oil and water. They were slowly growing together: the sundering gaining an aspect of adaptability, and the transformation getting a certain overcoming element, but it was…

She shifted the mantra again, watching how it moved her qi around and replenished her body once again, just like before when she first learned it. However, now she was much more familiar with the inner workings of her body and could see it settling into her body in a way she hadn’t really recognised before.

“Have you managed to recover the use of your mantra?” she asked Sana in her head.

“Somewhat… but I was more focused on destroying those other grey things then…” Sana replied. “Are you okay?”

“Well, aside from feeling like I just had my spine broken and being stamped on several times by an immortal monster… yeah…” she said absently… still looking at the way her mantra was now interacting with everything else.

Sana appeared beside her, and she watched as her sister spent a few moments sorting out what had been done to her mantra. After a moment, qi rippled around Sana, forming small vortexes and elemental flickers.

“This is?” Sana said dully, staring at her hands.

She also blinked, because suddenly there was a sense of pressure radiating out from her sister that hadn’t been there before.

Cailleach appeared beside them, holding the spear that had been impaled on the tower with a broad grin… “Congratulations… you just properly stepped into the Unity Realm.”

~ Sana – In the Ruins of Sandar Gate ~

“This is?” she muttered under her breath, staring at the way her qi flowed in her body according to the direction of her mantra, freeing it from the grasp of whatever had been done had been surprisingly straightforward in the end. It had been a matter more of willpower, given how weak the cage was. However, it had been a deep-rooted and subtle one for all that, playing off their ignorance and the pressure of the moment and nearly delivering a flawless blow with the natural worries that had started to emerge over how ‘overusing’ it had been slowly making a subtle weakness.

The way her qi flowed now naturally focused through her third eye, settling into her merged Qi Sea and Sea of Knowledge. It was the latter that was the real driver now, due to the primacy of her Nascent Soul.

‘Spirit. Blessed. Bestow. Body. Day.’

Both of them had the same mantra, although it behaved a bit differently. Arai’s Intent had changed a bit as well, but not to the extent that hers was cycle by cycle. It had lost a bit of the sharpness, but it was still in the process of shifting… maybe becoming more adaptable?

It was probably the same issue she had, the Maelstrom Intent. She considered it critically again, with an eye for change. The Pagoda was clear on that point – that intent was a template. It was not what she needed to take the next step. It could be part of it, but it wasn’t the main part…

The mantra was the same…

Qi… no...

She turned to look at the symbol… the Mortal Physique itself, ‘Formless Permutation’.

She realised she really hadn’t spent anywhere near enough time considering truly what that might actually mean. It was funny in a way, because she had spent quite a lot of time pondering it, just not perhaps in the right way. Even Cailleach’s explanation of what they were was… only speaking generally about their impact.

‘Formless Permutation’ – there had been hints of it, mainly in their bodies’ tendency to adapt to damage over time and also to withstand the punishing, absolute natures of the Yin and Yang True Elemental Qis that went into making Myriad Elements True Qi.

-Perhaps I should actually be calling it Yin Yang Myriad Elements True Qi, she thought wryly, before deciding to just leave it as it was, because that was a mouthful.

-The principle is Adaptability?

When she considered it in that way, it was not strong, or weak, but it had no obvious weakness, but it still didn’t feel right.

Her symbol gave a sigh somehow and nudged her, as if trying to point to itself.

She stared back at it… wondering somehow if it could be quite that simple.

If the symbol had eyes it would probably have rolled them, she guessed, for she got a negative shunt from it.

Cailleach’s words stirred her in mind: ‘Normally that’s a serious threshold, but there’s a big advantage to Mortal Physiques… they do the hard part for you in exchange for making the rest of your cultivation experience a torrid succession of near life-ending calamities…’

The weird conversation with the spear about mortal physiques also surfaced. What it had said…

{…..suffering, unusual thing, big leap. Potential, accumulation, acquire Fate. Never inborn…. … … … …mortality}

She compared the two: ‘suffering’ – well, that was an accurate description of the curve of their power growth so far.

‘Unusual thing’ – well, she guessed the symbol was...

‘Big leap’ – they advanced fast, giving boosts in power for advancements? Or that they had the potential to grow in many ways?

That left the other three: Potential, Accumulation and Acquire Fate.

The Physique had huge potential… because it was built of accumulated experiences… that also tallied with the drawing all sorts of calamities to you.

However, that still left ‘Acquire Fate’. She was sure now that they had severed something to do with fate, but how did you actually ‘Acquire’ it at their realm?

-Unless it’s less obvious than that? She wondered to herself.

Not so much acquiring fate itself, but agency with fate? Does possessing a Mortal Physique give you a degree of ability to control your own fate? That seemed weird, given that Cailleach had basically stressed that they drew disaster, and she would be hard pressed to call their tribulations up to now things they had any kind of control over. Stuff had just kept dropping on them from a great height, almost as fast as they could deal with it.

That seemed weird… she put it away for now, which brought her back to ‘it does the hard part for you’, which had been rattling around in her head like a marble the whole time.

-Oh… Oh... OH! She narrowly avoided jumping on the spot and swiftly ordered various things in her mind.

Qi, Soul Intent, Maelstrom Intent, Mantra… the something else that was niggling, the little inconsistency that had been holding it back before was… the symbol had been ‘Boundless Transformations’ before it became ‘Formless Permutations’

Without her even needing to do anything special, the symbol shifted things about in her Sea of Knowledge somehow. She cycled her qi and found that the Maelstrom Intent was still there… but it was now her Maelstrom Intent; it was able to interfere with anything it touched subtly.

In a sense, the two were very similar, to the point where she had had the ideas repeatedly crossing past each other like unlit boats on a dark river. Once she made that little leap, it just… fit.

It was nothing to do with cultivation, or power, or strength, or anything else like that. ALL those things were acquired. The key was how she saw the world. Arai was bright and direct, but she was more dissembling. She was also, she had to self-acknowledge, a bit flighty, although not in work-related matters, so that side of her had been shoved in a lonely corner of her mind… from where it sulked and occasionally threw sardonic remarks, trying not to engage to much with the other little bit of her that just hated the world and everything that had brought ruin to their happy family life.

That had become blurred down here, where they were constantly bouncing off each other, always having to be the other’s strength, they had grown closer together, but in doing so she had lost sight of her own centre.

She stared back at the symbol, finally understanding that it wasn’t that it was a separate thing. They had transmuted themselves. She had actually awakened a part of her own sub-consciousness?

It shrugged and she got the suggestion that that was sort of the case, but also there was more to it. The way it did so was remarkably reminiscent of her own snarkier inner thoughts.

She reorganised the thoughts in her mind with a smile.

The timeless moment shifted and she felt everything settle in her mind again as the symbol linked all the relevant bits together into a nice pattern and proffered them to her – ‘Formless Permutation’. The ability of a person to see the world in many ways and change it according to the way they need to, without doing so in an unnatural way.

She shook her head with a silly grin – that was a lot of thought just to arrive at a really obvious answer.

Stretching out a hand, she let the ‘Mortal Principle of Formless Permutation’ sweep out with the Maelstrom Intent. It swept the qi around her in gentle eddies, shifting corpses slightly as it went.

She turned to see Cailleach looking at her like she was some form of unusual mushroom before grabbing Arai whose face was somewhere between surprise and a half-spoken exclamation and vanishing in a blur.

“Eh-?” she managed before a horribly familiar sense of crisis descended on her like the shrieking lance from a vengeful god.

The storm above howled and a lance of black lightning, tinged in many colours, descended towards her. She wielded her nascent ‘Principle’ against it, feeling how the surging power descending from on high flowed and shifting the world around it imperceptibly.

It fought her, the thunder targeting her becoming not one bolt, but 11, all arriving simultaneously. Her hair rose and the stones of the square melted and warped around her, bodies drifting up and disintegrating in multi-coloured flares.

She intensified her use of the principle to rip apart the trajectory of the lightning bolts, dispersing them from her, scattering the focused strike as best she could. The sense of being inexorably targeted intensified, like a tug of war between heaven and earth and within it, she saw a chink of something that shouldn’t perhaps have been there.

The principle flowed into the gap made in her connection to the conceptual forces behind this portion of the tribulation and pried them apart. In that instance she felt a flash of kinship to the sensation she had severed in the final moment of her Severing Origins tribulation – Fate.

The lightning bolts scattered, swept into the maelstroms of her qi where they were absorbed directly into her body, rippling through her meridians, widening them, tempering them and also further opening the ‘crack’ between her and the world’s fate that she had previous opened with her Severing Origins tribulation just a little bit further.

The storm intensified. The heavens screamed in rage and the thunderclouds turned pitch black. She felt the entire square creak faintly… no, the entire city within the storm wall in fact. Everything was locked down, restrained like a prisoner awaiting…

Judgement.

It came light a sigh – pure white lightning from heaven.

Lotus blossoms and lilies rippled around it, petals falling light summer rain… celestials danced in its penumbra as it rolled towards her: 33 bolts arriving like heavenly dragons ridden by Buddha’s and Sages dressed in white, accompanied by the music of celestial maidens. She wielded her Formless Permutations Principle fully, drew upon the symbol and cast everything she had into the face of the onslaught, drawing a great symbol of ‘Formless Permutation’ in the sky to melt the attack directly.

The Buddhas chanted, the Sages spoke words of profundity, Celestials danced and the world grew quiet for a moment before the white lightning coursed through her symbol, tracing its route and flowing into her body directly. It washed across her Qi Sea, making her howl in agony as tested every aspect of her being to its limits before melting away into her body and soul as if it never had been.

The heavens rose, forming a vast, cavernous darkness out of which came 66 robed officials. Each one carried a great stele and spoke in thunderous words. As one, they turned their faces aside and each stele emitted a black bolt, edged in nebulous grey fire. As they descended, they became demons and devils that whispered horrible things. They grasped for her and tried to take away all that she could ever be, proclaiming that she was the apostate, the aberration and the one who should not be.

Her body quaked, her soul blurred, the city round her crumbled into dust, its buildings collapsing into shadows. Shadows rose to claim her even as the symbol blazed all around her. She struck the devils that grasped for her with a spear formed of her own qi – answering their attacks with those from the Heavenly Maelstrom Spear Art, which in this moment became something else entirely. Dark waters rose up and swept aside devils while the forces of heaven and earth shifted around her, danced with her, sang with her as they swept aside the demons, drowning them in the depths even as their greedy denial was melted by her principle.

With the last demon falling, the 66 robed officials screamed out as one and cast their steles down at her before collapsing themselves into 66 more bolts of pitch black lightning. They roared down around her even as her principle infused her intent, her mantra and her qi and consumed them, ripping them apart and devouring them.

The pitch black lightning flowed into her and ripped her body to shreds, every fibre of her being was castigated by it, body and soul, as it sought to reject her and everything within her on a fundamental level. She barely managed to keep herself intact and hold onto the three iterations of the symbol that she was now fully cognisant of in her body – the symbol in her bones, the symbol in her soul and now the symbol in her Sea of Knowledge that was her ‘Principle’. As they resisted, she found all three were slowly moving closer and closer together under the pressure of the onslaught, which almost anticlimactically ran out of steam and she collapsed to her knees.

In the silence of the world, 99 black and gold dragons swirled down out of the turbulent black abyss, twisting everything into a vast maelstrom above her. At its heart she could see a ghostly throne, edged in black and gold, upon which a shrouded figure sat. With a single gesture, she felt its… principle reach her.

Retribution.

Each of these stages, she was facing a principle cast from the Heavens themselves, she realised. Fate, Judgement, Denial… Retribution.

‘To go against Heaven is to incur the retribution of the Heavens.’

She stared at it defiantly even as its gaze scoured her – she showed it everything she had overcome, even as it laughed at her, the very sky itself shaking in ridicule. The throne faded away, the heavens, who the sages always claimed would ‘leave a way’ out of any disaster, closed their eyes to her plight, denying to even watch her end as the 99 dragons fell as one. With its final act it proclaimed her a criminal who had refused its good grace of death before its sight.

She sneered inwardly thinking that that action was not dissimilar to the words of the demon… or even those old elders who took their brother away… who preyed on them when their mother had passed away but feared to step forward before then.

She struck out and the first dragon collapsed beneath her strike, she demolished a second and then a third. However, with every strike her principle wavered. With each dragon that fell, the others were able to better resist her ‘Principle’ and each one that fell the fury of those who came was greater as well.

By the 60th dragon, she was unable to even think. By the 90th dragon, she was existing from one second to the next.

When the 99th dragon fell, the world went still.

She stared at the silver figure standing before her…

Her mother lifted a silver spear of lightning and struck at her heart, grasping at her very being. The strike pierced through her, condemned her body, wrapped around her soul, struck into the depths of her Sea of Knowledge and then recoiled with a soundless scream that shook the whole world.

She wasn’t even sure why it recoiled, collapsing away as her body burned in a baptism of silver fire except that even as it faded away, she swore she heard her mother’s voice whispering gently on the edge of her hearing, the words lost in the cacophony, but their sheltering intent wrapping around her nonetheless.

The silver fire still burned her, though. It sank into her bones, melted her meridians, incinerated her Qi Sea and even ignited her Sea of Knowledge as it seared her Nascent Soul. For a few agonising, hopeless moments she was sure it had actually ended her. That she was just a conscious afterimage of the last lingering, overlapping aspects of her body and soul before they faded away–

The three symbols abruptly overlapped – her symbol in her bones, her principle and her Nascent Soul all somehow finding a moment of harmony amid the ruin of her body to become intrinsically connected with the symbol that was somehow between all of them.

Her body reverberated and the world shifted around her. Her principle rippled like a cloak around her for a few seconds before falling still.

Taking a deep breath, she stared up at the sky which was just as it had been. Sitting up, she was unsurprised to find that she was naked – her clothes having failed to survive the ordeal. Her jade scrip lay nearby, looking a bit shinier than was healthy. Its survival was not surprising either, given it was comparable to a Chosen Immortal artefact in terms of durability. It would take a bigger bolt than a Dao Seeking tribulation to damage it, but she checked it quickly anyway, satisfying herself that it was still in working order for the most part.

Looking around, the city was ruined. Its towers still stood, but most things were melted and twisted, scorched by heat or scoured by lightning. The square where the ritual had been was gone, half swept away, and the barrier around the whole city seemed to be failing as well.

Sweeping her soul sense looking for any lucky survivors, she found it was stronger, clearer as well. It easily covered the whole city, which was now totally devoid of life beyond Arai and Cailleach who were stood in the distance.

She took a few seconds to look at her body. It was changed, subtly and not so subtly, in several ways. Her mantra was properly re-integrated into her bones. Her meridians were changed, she noticed. Now they had a faint silver sheen, as did her bones, melting silver and gold together into strange patterns of clouds and flames and lightning bolts on the crystal cream surface. Her muscles, organs and everything else were changed as well – the symbol had connected to every building block of her body somehow.

That lingering separation, a lack of cohesion that had been there before she worked out the key to her principle was thoroughly gone. The distance between the disparate aspects of her principle was also gone. She still possessed all the other things, but the Mortal Principle of Formless Permutation itself was what guided them.

That was still somewhat fuzzy – which was, she could now see, the next step. Just like with the various ‘Intents’ within her body and Nascent Soul, she presumably had to grasp its nuance and permeate her whole body and soul with it, so its control was intuitive and instinctual. At that point she would fundamentally exceed the constraints of simple ‘Mortality’ and become an ‘Immortal’. All that was required was time and qi basically…

She stared up at the sky and started to laugh.

This wasn’t ‘Dao Seeking’ at all. She had already found her Dao.

“Quasi-Immortal,” she whispered the words because it was… unbelievable, really.

On the other hand, it was also a bit terrifying, because this tribulation had made her Nascent Soul one look like a walk in the park. As to what an Immortal Tribulation might look like?

She was still pondering that thought when Cailleach and Arai arrived beside her.

“I now have a newfound appreciation for the insanity of youth,” Cailleach said after a long moment. “It feels like I was premature on saying congratulations for crossing through Unity Realm properly… and arriving at ‘Path Seeking’…”

Arai just came over and gave her a silent hug that she returned...

They stood like that for several moments before Cailleach, who had been poking around coughed rather pointedly. “Well… that has rather ironically and prematurely dealt with everything here. Far be it for me to break up a happy moment but when I told my dearest it might be noisy… I didn’t expect you to summon a Mortal Judgement down by half accident… We should probably go back to the mountain.”

~ Rusula – White Depths Hold ~

Rusula sat at the table in a broad hall, watching the laughing, drinking Ghoblan toast the pair of Ur’Sar, still trying to adjust to the circumstances she found herself in. It wasn’t the first time she had been out and about, but for quite a while she had basically been lying in a room being ‘detoxified’, as various Ghoblan had put it, of the various bad ‘vibes’ she had accrued over the course of her rather too close for comfort foray into the ‘Big Evils’ of Under Grove.

“You is sitting there looking like just eat dog poop,” one of the Ghoblan sat opposite her giggled.

“What are we actually having a big feast for?” she asked eventually, because even on that point she wasn’t entirely clear yet.

“No one say?” the Ghoblan said dubiously.

“Nope, I was dragged out of my room and told to come get food. Now I’m here, getting food and everyone is having a party?” she said with as much patience as she could muster because she was a guest here.

“Ah, pity, I wonder as well,” the white bearded old Ghoblan opposite her said with an eye roll. “Maybe we go have talk about why party is…”

“…”

She wondered for a brief moment if–

“Old Bones, you stop troubling young ladies who are guests. You married already. Have eyes for only one Ghoblan,” the Witch of White Depths Peak said, appearing with a scowl behind the old Ghoblan who spat out his drink.

Before she could say anything, the old Ghoblan, who she now realised was certainly the White Depths Chieftain ‘Old Horned Bones’, was dragged away to another table and sat down with two other old Ghoblan who patted him on the shoulder and offered him a large bowl of alcohol.

“You’re up and about?” She glanced up to find Arai sat down, opposite her.

“Ah… yes…” she said, a bit abashed suddenly. “I was awake when you came in before, but I couldn’t move.”

“Oh, hmm…” Arai nodded. “I’m glad you’re okay,” she said after a moment.

“Um… why is there a big party?” she asked, because presumably it was related to Arai and Sana.

Arai gave her a ‘look’ and just sighed. “Apparently today is a special day for Ghoblan.”

“Special day…?” she frowned before realising what the Ur’Sar meant. “Oh, you mean the ‘Storm Season Solstice’ when the harmony of the year tilts?”

That was the only one she could think of, although she had thought it already passed in all honesty.

“That is the one,” Arai nodded. “They also decided to have a big party because we uh… well, we broke through to the 5th Circle.”

“…”

She nearly spat out her drink, partly because the way she said it made it sound like it was a day of the week and also because she had assumed they were already in the 5th Circle.

“Oh, I guess it would be 6th Advancement in Sana’s case,” Arai said after a moment’s reflection. “I am nearly there, but…”

“Ah,” she nodded and pretended not to notice the very brief flicker of… not unhappiness, but something akin to dissatisfaction on the Ur’Sar girl’s face.

She nearly asked if Arai would like to go somewhere quieter to talk, but didn’t, because that might be misconstrued, not that she would have been… unamenable to that. It wasn’t something that had ever come up and her instincts told her that now was not the time to have even the misunderstanding of that kind of thing in any case.

“How did you…?”

“How did we survive?” Arai said with a half snort.

The Ur’Sar took a deep drink of her own alcoholic beverage. “It turns out Moon Mushrooms are as scary as the Pig Devils in their own way.”

As cryptic answers went, it was almost a piece of art, she had to consider.

“Any idiot tell you that,” Bright Fungi-seeker said, slipping up to the table as well with a big grin. “I toast your deed, kill two cities worth of Defilers and help bring big demon temporary death, is ‘achievement’!”

Arai raised her own cup and received the toast with a rather odd salute, before taking a drink and sighing again.

~ Arai, White Depths Peak ~

Sat at the table, Arai found herself looking at the others around the table and feeling a bit out of sorts. It was mostly because she was realising that she might have become unused to being around a lot of people. She had been on edge in the Cloud Arrows tribe as well in these gatherings, but that had been a different kind of ‘edge’ to be on. They had been unsure of what they had gotten themselves into and she had been more worried about being pushed up against some wall in the name of dubious religious practice. Here, though, it was just a party and in fact, despite the two of them being one catalyst for it, they weren’t even really the focus. There was some toasting of their ‘achievement’, which left her a bit hollow – because it was mostly Sana’s achievement anyway, courtesy of a truly land-shattering tribulation and because she was nursing the combined after-effects of all the mess of that day.

“How are Pezvak and…” she looked around, “the others?”

“Pezvak is still out cold. Luz is actually over there,” Rusula pointed to a distant table where she saw that Luz was having a drinking contest with two Ghoblan while Jelas and the other, mute Ur’Inan watched and made bets.

“I went out to get some air,” Ragash said, coming over to their table and sitting down at the end. “Parties are not a thing I’ve been to many of, of late.”

“On that we can all agree,” she said, raising her own cup again in a toast.

They all laughed at that, which made her feel a bit better.

“I didn’t believe White Depths Peak was actually a thing,” Ragash said after a moment.

“Oh – it thing,” Bright Fungi-seeker giggled, “but it big thing, like Old Axe Hall.”

“Really?” Rusula said staring around dully.

“Yes, all Ghoblan here big 7th Advancement at the very least.” Bright Fungi-seeker said conspiratorially. “This place basically big drinking den for those who starting to reconnect with ancestral memories properly, looking to take step to 8th Advancement. Witch of White Depths is one of big powers in this land. Get in her good books only good deed.”

Having seen the Witch of White Depths Cailleach’s handiwork up close at this point, she was more than convinced of that.

“They went and killed a big summoned Defiler,” she added, “earlier today, in fact.”

“Ohh… that the pig skulls sat in the pond outside?” Bright Fungi-seeker said, half questioning, half stating.

“Yes,” she nodded, trying not to shudder. “You should be very glad you didn’t see it.”

“I give thanks every day then that I not see again,” Bright Fungi-seeker nodded seriously for once. “Last time I see one, it only for a moment. Very unpleasant experience.”

“That is probably underselling it,” she said, taking another swig of the drink, which was rather potent spirit wine.

“Yes, but better than being too specific,” Bright Fungi-seeker said with a shudder that she could appreciate all the better for understanding why, never mind that it raised the question of where the little Ghoblan had seen it, unless it was when they had been captured or a lesser version maybe.

They chatted on for a while before she excused herself to go stand in the air of the gorge. The coolness was quite refreshing, for a few moments at least. Then it reminded her that she had been in sub-tropical temperatures for over a year and that the way the climate appeared to ignore realm applied to cold as well as heat. At that point though, she was too far along her decision-making process to just immediately go back inside, so she wandered about the gorge instead.

It took her a full thirty seconds to realise what was ‘bugging’ her, and then she looked up at the ‘sky’ above it and found stars.

“Huh…”

“This place have sky. We give day-night cycle.” She nearly jumped as she realised ‘Old Bones’ was sat on a rock by the pond with the skulls, sipping a warm mug of spirit wine.

“I didn’t notice before...” she muttered.

“It cloudy when you come in and you not exactly with it.” Old Bones observed.

“So this is how you keep track of the days,” she said finally understanding.

“Yes, it very annoying to never have day and night. It why so many people live underground, that way you can at least lie to yourself convincingly,” the Old Ghoblan nodded. “You think it bad being here for a year, try being here for 30,000 years. You get bleary eyes after a while, start dreaming of darkness, which in this place is not good.”

“Is that deliberate?” she asked.

“When you put like that, frequently think yes,” Old Bones nodded.

They both stood there in silence for a while as she stared at the stars – to her surprise if she extended her soul sense upwards, she could see a whole sky rather than just the sliver that was visible. It was a profound enchantment, although that made sense given the person who made it was likely Cailleach.

“I know your problem too well,” Old Bones said after a moment.

“You do?” she said, wondering which one…

“You not used to people, and wondering what to do next.”

“It has been a long time since we were around people,” she conceded.

“And you still not sure you want to trust,” Old Bones nodded sagely.

“…”

She hadn’t been about to say that out loud, but it was hard to escape the feeling of being used slightly, even here. That was partly due to the much greater awareness of the world around her.

“You have both done a lot for us,” she said eventually.

“Yet this is alien place to you, you not know the rules. Back home you have big rules and safety: you know what is what, who is what, why is what,” Old Bones mused, stroking his beard.

“Yes…” she said after a long pause.

“Hospitality is big thing in this land for Ghoblan, Ur’Inan, Ur’Vash and us,” Old Bones said eventually. “We old people, value old ways – sometimes those ways bloody and cruel, other times they just plain weird, but words are important, and hospitality is important. You invited here as guest, have grace to us, help young Ghoblan, do good deeds, uncover big evil that gnaws, these are achievement. I say before, but worth saying again, while you here as guest, our house your house, our food, your food and so on. You understand that tenant?”

She nodded. Hospitality towards guests was important in Eastern Azure as well, whether you were on the Imperial Continent or any other, as much as that felt like a lifetime ago.

“You not do breakthrough in this place,” Old Bones said with a sideways look.

“…”

“I wasn’t planning to,” she said with as much humour as she could muster.

“I knows, but worth reminding – not because rude, but actually because this place quite stared at, especially now people realise Defilers down there and we take action. You safe here, but you go outside after making big noise here, especially when people stare hard at the door, and other less reputable folks might get ideas.”

“So I should go outside and break through… but won’t that also draw eyes?” she said curiously.

“Yes and no – outside is big turbulence, actually very hard to see what is what between inside mountains and out. Some extra lightning not get noticed very easily out there, even big lightning like you probably bring,” Old Bones said with a chuckle.

She nodded, and stared back at the sky, trying to quash the other thing – the link with her sister didn’t help there. Not at all in fact. They could hide it, but she couldn’t hide it from herself, and while she wanted to blame it on what she had just undergone, that would be unfair.

The key to the breakthrough was her, the thing she had to find was unique to her, just as Sana had found the point within her where all those things were hers, and she also had to find that. She had found it, in fact, but it made her confront a few things about herself that she didn’t much like.

“That soup we were given was powerful spirit food,” she said after a while.

“It very good soup,” Old Bones nodded. “Very nourishing, very healing.”

“I could use some more spirit wine,” she said after a long pause, because as far as answers went, that was quite confirmatory.

“Here,” Old Bones tossed her a jar which she caught. “You drink, but not get this from me. Wife already misunderstand once. She find me giving booze to second young lady in evening, she kick me into swamp and make me run away from Shussu!”

She had to laugh at that, because it was kind of funny; she had seen him go over to talk to Rusula and then get dragged off by Cailleach.

Holding the jar, she turned to Old Bones and offered him a salute. “Thank you for the hospitality, Honoured Old Bones, this junior accepts it on behalf of both myself and my sister!”

“…”

Old Bones stared at her and then just started to laugh. Holding up his own jug, he replied, “These Old Bones welcome you as guest to White Depths Hold. My house is your house while you wish to stay as guest here.”

They both drank the toast. And then Old Bones laughed at her again as she tried not to spit the wine out because of how strong it was. It sank into her body like fire – the qi within it, if that’s what it was, was equal parts fire and ice.

Several days later, Arai found herself sat on a windswept crag on the mountain, not the peak, but one of the subsidiary ones. Below her, Old Bones and two other Ghoblan were fishing in a lake. The storm front had passed, again. The next one was present on the distant horizon but wouldn’t arrive for several days.

So they had partied for an evening and then Sana had said she needed to go sort out her principle somehow, and presumably try to wrestle with the pagoda… which left her… to her own devices, really.

She had gone and sat in their abode, which Cailleach had given them when they got back, but after a while that had just been annoying. She had, one way or another been cooped up in a nasty box for far too long, and sitting inside a stone room cultivating when she was basically skirting along the edge of a tribulation was… probably not the best idea.

There was also the fact that she was trying not to let circumstances cause a stupid fight. They had been stuck together for over a year, surviving hand in hand, and somehow watching Sana undergo that tribulation from a distance, sheltered by Cailleach, in the storm had felt… dividing. She, the older sister was meant to be the one to take the risks, to blaze the path, to be the protective one, and in the end Sana had taken the risk and done just that, albeit by accident.

It was a very stupid reason – and it was very her.

She had buried so much over the last year. Pain, fear, loss, hate, terror, loneliness in a strange way as well. Worry over her friends, worry over their father, her responsibilities as the elder sister. She had been the one to protect and lead after their mother died, and somehow what had happened with Sana’s principle had happened at ‘just’ the wrong moment and that, when combined with the understanding that she had to embrace all the things that made her… her, even the selfish bits and the nasty bits… and the bit that sat in the corner and mumbled curses to their mother’s vile clan who had forced her to death.

The link made it worse as well, because it was something they both knew and were both choosing to ignore. Sana was deliberately giving her space rather than doing the usual thing where she just picked the fight, because she also didn’t want to cause a thing, in a different way.

It was all the worse because they were so close, usually… certainly in the eyes of others… and had been close, constantly, since they got here, through necessity, making the borders blur even more. Now that their mantras had recovered from the villainy done to try to neuter them, that link was even more intrinsic in a strange way. Sharing a link into your sister’s head was not a good thing at times. Good in a fight, yes, but terrible in a fight between siblings.

It would be a very stupid fight.

She sighed and lay back in the snow that was around her, staring at the storm-lit highlight sky. She wasn’t sure how long she lay there, just watching clouds move, letting her qi cycle, letting her pseudo-principle shift.

The Ghoblan were a long way away, and all of them were more than strong enough to not get caught in the tribulation anyway.

What Sana had done wouldn’t quite work for her in the same way. That went without saying, because it had to be something intrinsic to her. Old Bones had basically confirmed as much as well. Each ‘Principle’ was a bit different anyway, but a ‘Mortal Principle’ took that to the pointy end. They were ‘Unique’ according to Old Bones and formed depending on the building blocks of the person. Her sister’s was about changing the natural order of the world, while hers was settling on something much closer to the nature of the changes within it.

She already knew what it was, what it would be called…

‘Accept what is given… You cannot melt with force what others can… This is not a spiritual law…’ her mother’s wry voice whispered on the wind…

That was sort of ironic, because in the end, it was almost like a spiritual law.

She stared at the clouds that swirled above her.

The lightning when it finally fell, was expected. Eleven black lances aiming for her vital gates and key organs. She lay there and saw the fall, watching them twist down and become one with her. She intercepted them with her ‘Principle’ shifting them and letting the symbol eat them whole as they flowed through her meridians, into her Nascent Soul and into the void beyond it where the totality of the symbol, her Mortal Physique, currently resided, in parts of her that she continued to think of as her mind’s eye, the third eye, somewhere between all the other parts of her.

She felt something like a constraint within her shatter – split apart as they were dissolved throughout her body under the backlash of their dispersal. They flowed into her Nascent Soul and became a part of her, freeing her just a little bit more from the chains of the world as they did so.

White lightning came from black sky: Celestial Maidens, Wise Buddhas and Sages came with Heavenly Generals reading out judgments, declaring the superiority of the natural order.

She spoke with them, pitching one to the other, refuting Sage with Buddha, Buddha with General, General with Sage, dancing with the Celestial Maidens, chanting with the Buddhas, sparring with the Generals and trading words on the way the world worked with the Sages. The white lightning dissipated, incorporated into her body, breaking another little chain that held it. Her principle shifting and adapting, flowing through many changes and slowly pulling the disparate aspects of her experiences together in her body, Nascent Soul and mind’s eye.

Grey and black serpents came, whispering in the clouds and the storm, showing her the way her principle should be, riding upon them were wise elders of the Court of Heaven, Sages of the World, Paragons of the Arts and Scholar Kings to tell her how it should be. Great authority spoke to her, and her soul trembled, her body grew feeble amid the cold and the snow, her principle was… Those false words of theirs, that had eroded and warped the symbol in her soul in 66 subtle and different ways, trying to deny it…

She crushed their deceits ruthlessly. They had not walked her path, not stood with her, and not experienced what she had. They crumbled and dissipated one after another, getting devoured by her, captured by her mantra and turned into new strength through her Principle, their attempts at twisting her were turned into opportunities to fix little weaknesses and by the time they were done her body and soul were almost unified, tempered against manipulation like that which had nearly taken her mantra from her and doomed them both.

The heavens recoiled and lightning descended, 99 bolts of black and gold. Each one that struck her tried to transform her, warp her or subvert her. As each one failed, melted by her principle, they scourged her body with lightning, trying to break some little piece of her meridian or introduce an imperfection to her body that would ruin her like some lingering vengeance across the generations – a subtle weakness in a muscle or a flaw in bone that would cause failure when the symbol fused everything.

They wormed into her dantian, into her Nascent Soul – tried to pull her into memories of joy and torment, twisting her psyche this way and that, pulling her back into nightmares of this world and of her adolescence.

She refuted and solved every threat with the symbol that represented her principle. Even so, the assault she had to weather was immense. The toil and punishment made her soul scream and her body crumble.

Her sister stood over her, a silver shadow, holding a spear to her throat… or was it mother…?

It was hard to tell… they looked alike sometimes… This was the ultimate representation of her inner demons in some weird way. The thing she treasured the most sent down by the heavens above to execute her.

Her sister’s principle tugged at her, lashed at her, consumed her and tried to tear her apart in a sea of silver fire. The symbol burnt away like a rice paper flower on a funeral pyre.

Her whole being became part of the silver flames… the words her mother spoke that day echoing in her mind a final time, or maybe it was her sister’s as they stood before her bier.

With a sigh, she sat up…

The silver fire was gone, sinking away into her body, cleansing it of the remaining impurities within her.

‘Myriad Transformations Mortal Principle’

It hung in her Sea of Knowledge, a tiny seed that would be nurtured as her qi circulated through it.

She looked at the rock still bubbling around her, scooping a handful of it up and letting it run through her fingers. It felt like warm water, even though it would have burned her to cinders mere months ago. The silver fire had made connections for her Myriad Transformations Physique Symbol through every part of her body, courtesy of its mimicry of her sister’s principle – although perhaps it would have done so anyway, and that was just a mask it wore to try to make her succumb.

The tribulations had been as much mental as physical, maybe more so, a test of her adaptability, knowing when to show strength and when to bend, when to strike decisively and when to melt with polite words and actions.

Not to say she was suddenly some enlightened sage, she chuckled dryly and ran a hand through her hair, which had grown about 20 cm during the tribulation it seemed, and was a bit frizzed from the heat.

“No…” she sighed out loud, watching more of the molten rock dribble like warm wax.

She was still the same person she had been yesterday really, capable of the same silly thoughts and–

–She dodged the lightning bolt – barely. It had fallen almost 100 metres away and up above, on a different, higher crag, but the sky was now rumbling ominously. Even at that distance, it had seared her skin and made her bones tingle.

Below her, all three Ghoblan were waving at her and pointing…

“Ah, Monkeyshit-! It really has it in for me through nine generations!” she swore and shot down the slope, dodging between shadows of rocks as another bolt fell – much closer this time.

She felt her skin warp and her bones burn slightly as the raw, primordial thunder tried to take root in them, all the while her Nascent Soul and her mantra struggled between them to keep her fully conscious.

“Idiot!” she groaned, although there wasn’t much to be done beyond sending a few obscene hand signs skywards for all that the lightning would care.

Picking herself up, she scrambled to shelter under a rocky in an overhang above an avalanche gully she had nearly been thrown into.

Beside her, Old Bones just handed her a jar of wine.

“You have possibly bigger style than your sister,” the old Ghoblan chuckled as she took a drink of the burning liquid to steady her nerves.

Another dropped a few hundred metres away and made her hair fan out and her skin crawl.

“To be killed by one of those after having overcome my tribulation would indeed be a bad joke,” she muttered, taking a deeper gulp.

“Yes, nature have sense of humour like that,” Old Bones agreed. “Think very worst things very funny.”