The songbirds sing their tunes and a quill scribbles through a scroll as the sun shines unto Tantra’s form.
She didn’t get any sleep, couldn’t really.
She needs to keep pumping Qi into her lungs.
Ranya was panicking on the way back, well, everyone she cares for was, but none were as dramatic as Ranya. She almost cut down the young master when he said that Tantra was a lost cause, it took Sola to calm her down and reason they should focus on getting to the medicine hall, not fighting amongst each other.
Kisrin couldn’t help carry her, for reasons she hopes is obvious.
The journey back was uneventful, other than Ranya’s incoherent babbling and Yorins constant reassurance. She gets it, she’s dying, they’re worried, but she’s kinda busy with fighting off Roguth’karrs. Distractions are not helpful.
Sola acted as their scout, and led them safely back to the sect while Etra, Ranya, and Yorin carried her for hours. She’s gonna have to pay them back once she’s not riddled with the cold inferno besetting her body with every offering of Qi. She can’t do this forever, and not just because she’s running out of Qi. It’s hurting more and more with every offering, they could feed her Qi stones indefinitely, but there’ll come a point where she can’t handle the strange pain.
She pleads at the figure scribbling at a scroll with her eyes.
Please, she thinks, let the healers work on me.
He doesn’t answer, continuing to observe and record.
-
Vozen is writing.
There’s so many intriguing fascinations hiding in the world, so many crevices to explore and treasures to find. Sometimes that treasure is a person. Like the girl laying in front of him right now, he can hardly believe what he’s seeing, or feeling. The girl is doing something that should be impossible, she’s turning her Qi to air, yet she has no mark of the dao on her soul. It’s not a perfect transmutation, some of it remains as Qi, and he can see how it wreaks havoc across her body. It’s not damaged, per say, she’s not boosting. It looks a lot like Qi poisoning, turning her skin a sickly grey and making her eye’s glow.
Qi poisoning is so easy to avoid that most don’t consider it a problem, you simply have to avoid the denser foci like the Devils Fissure, or the Hangman’s Dunes. The only other way to get Qi poisoning is to trespass into a condensation array, in which case you are willingly choosing death. So yeah, it’s a lot like Qi poisoning.
Except it isn’t
Because Qi poisoning would just kill her, slow or fast. This is making her stronger. He can see her progress to foundation increase incrementally with each hour that passes. So far her cultivation rate is double the standard method of circulation, and she hasn’t even exercised herself to exhaustion! How much faster would it be if applied and refined to proper training routines? This nobody girl may have just stumbled on a secret technique for all he knows; and that’s the beauty of staying in a sect so far from civilization. Every decade or so a curiosity like this one emerges, breaking the conventionally understood rules of cultivation, often by complete accident.
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It is a wonder for his research on the mystic arts, even if he has to make a few sacrifices.
-
Tantra doesn’t know how long it’s been.
But she knows the sun has set more than once, even if she isn’t composed enough to properly count how many that is. She’s gotten better at gathering Qi from the stones, considering she only has a few moments before her vision starts to fade, it’s no real surprise. It’s that or die. Just like the pain. Oh the pain.
The cold flame burns through all that she is, finding every inch of her body and both soothing and burning. She’s convinced that the only reason she can keep going is because it’s not really pain, a part of it is sure, but another is relief. It’s hard to describe, a good pain perhaps? No, that makes her sound like a masochist. A pain that is not pain? That just sounds needlessly philosophical, she’s a merchant, not a scholar! Cold fire isn’t accurate either because it’s not really cold and it's not really burning. More like if both were put into a mixture to create something new, and they complemented rather than eliminated each other. Which makes little to no sense.
But it doesn’t really matter if it makes sense or not, she just has to keep dribbling Qi into her lungs, just has to keep living.
-
“Why aren’t the healers seeing her?” Yorin demands, “It’s been days.”
“You’d do well to show respect to your betters boy,” Jorin grumbles, “the elders have spoken, the girl's survival is dependent on her and her alone.”
“Who cares? She could die!”
Jorins face goes dark, “aye, she could.”
Yorin is just confused and flabbergasted, “this isn’t right. A sect is a cultivator's home, their sanctuary. How could they choose not to heal one of their own? Tantra didn’t do anything to deserve this kind of treatment”
The bigger man measures the boy and lets out a long sigh, “you are right,” he says, “the rulings of the Elders can be cruel, but it is to better the sect. I’m sure there is a reason they are withdrawing help.”
“But…but what about Tantra?” He says weakly.
“Like I said, her survival is dependent on her.”
Yorin clenches both fists hard and Jorin sighs, he knows the reason, but telling the boy his friend may have found a secret technique would go against the whole ‘secret’ part. He doesn’t like this, never does, it’s always when someones on the brink of death that they discover something of the secrets of Qi, and always they are subjected to the same treatment.
Some live, some die.
In the eye’s of the Elders, it is a worthy sacrifice.
-
One foot in front of the other.
A simple idiom, representing how a journey is traveled by steps. One at a time. Cultivation is a lot like that, there are shortcuts, Tantra has found one, but it comes with its own risks. Cultivation is the eternal journey, no one has ever found it’s end, and likely no one ever will. Each path is its own journey, containing so many steps. Cultivation is about perseverance, consistency, and diligence.
One foot in front of the other.
In a way, legacy could be considered the same, passing down your knowledge unto another so that they proceed to do the same. From one generation to the next, building. That’s for an optimistic view though, it doesn’t consider when a family falls, or when a child is forced to start from scratch. She’s never really considered orphans before, weird that it would come to mind on her deathbed. Maybe that’s a sign of some sort? Perhaps she’s been too focused on herself to notice the plights of those around her.
On the scale of bad shit that could happen, being forced into a sect isn’t really all that high.
One foot in front of the other.
She wonders how the harem feels? They all have talents beyond pushing out babies, and yet that’s all the public will ever think of them. She wonders how crushing it was to develop yourself so much into your passion, only to be sold by your own family. She wishes she could spend her last moments with the harem, they were her mothers, teachers, and closest friends.
One foot in front of the other.
Something shifts in her throat, and almost instinctively she takes a gigantic gulp of air, turns to her side, and starts coughing hoarsely.