Jian’s sword passed through Renfei’s neck cleanly. His head slowly rolled off his shoulders to reveal the sight of Eli, collapsed on the other side of the room, and the horror on his face.
The betrayal in his eyes just made Jian angry. Was he really that naive? Renfei had already broken Elijah’s leg and outright admitted he was going to kill them. Didn’t he realize that she was doing this for both of them? Did he expect her to just tie the village Elder up and leave?
Either the rest of the villagers would kill Renfei themselves, before he recovered, or he’d be chasing the two of them down within a week.
Renfei’s head hit the ground and Jian kicked his body over the edge, not bothering to watch as it fell into the boiling red liquid twenty meters below them. At least that way the bastard could serve as the ritual’s fuel instead of them. It was a shame about the others, but he’d seemed confident about the number of lives it would take to re-aspect the Dream Well when he’d been gloating earlier. It was a cheap enough price for a chance at finally descending to the Liminal Realm, Eli would see that. He had to see she didn’t have a choice.
What were one or two deaths when weighed against the potential good they could do over an infinite lifespan? With over half the sacrifices already dead, it would be more wasteful to let the ritual go unfinished.
She started walking towards where Renfei’s granddaughter lay, already knocked out during the earlier fighting. She was glad she’d never memorized the girl’s name, it would make killing her easier.
***
Jian raised her cup with the rest of the toast, pretending to drink. The village had treated them well enough, but there was no point in getting sloppy before Renfei finished his purification ritual and prepared their payment. She didn’t want any mistakes when the Liminal Realm was on the line.
She smiled wryly as Eli drained his own cup in a single shot, no hesitation. Even if he didn’t have a single suspicious bone in his body, she wished he would at least pretend he was being cautious.
When the mortal to her left slumped in his chair, she assumed he was drunk.
When he tipped forward and planted his face into his food, she panicked.
She leaped over the table, her knife already out, only for a stone spear to strike up from the ground. It tore through the table in a hail of wooden splinters and sliced deep into her shoulder before she could get out of its way. She cursed as she fell off the table, already pulling on her life affinity to start closing the wound.
She threw her knife and rolled under the ruined table, falling into the sliver of shadow it was still casting, to reappear behind Renfei mid lunge with a second knife already in her hand.
The first knife she threw bounced off the stone vambrace hidden under his sleeves as he turned, predicting her attack. She adjusted to the change, kicking one of his legs out from under him. She dived forward, putting her whole weight behind her knife as she fell on him, but the old man was stronger than he looked. He got his hand between them, letting her knife sink all the way through his palm to keep it out of his chest, and shoved her off of him. He didn’t even scream.
She spun away from him, but too slowly.
Water shot from a handful of cups on the table toward her head. She leaned to the side, dodging the jets, but the water stopped in midair, forming a floating pool before surging towards her. It enveloped her head and her vision distorted as the water covered her eyes. She screamed, causing an explosion of bubbles with her breath, but the air wasn’t enough to break the construct. Neither was scooping it off with cupped hands. As soon as she cleared her mouth, the water immediately slid back into place.
She dodged another stone spear and looked at where Eli was slumped forward in his chair. Renfei’s granddaughter had wrapped a cloth around his mouth and nose. His eyes were closed.
Jian cursed, but didn’t hesitate. She was outnumbered and unprepared, she’d just have to hope they wouldn’t hurt Eli before she could rescue him.
Jian jumped into a shadow and fled.
***
Jian rolled over on the futon, lifting herself on one elbow. The room was pitch-black, but that didn’t mean much to her. She would’ve preferred sleeping outside, but the lack of stars across the firmament disturbed Eli. Not to mention his general embarrassment at the idea of outdoor nudity.
She smirked at the reminder of how red he’d gotten when she suggested it. It had been adorable.
She looked over at where he now monopolized the vast majority of the blanket. Somehow he’d twisted it completely around his torso, waist, and all the way down one of his legs.
Buying a second blanket was starting to look like a smart idea after all.
She traced the feel of his body with her hands. He wasn’t quite as fit as she was, but he clearly hadn’t ignored cultivating his body. His muscles were built more for vanity than anything practical, but that didn’t make them any less nice to look at.
***
That’s enough of that. Jian thought, shoving the memory back down. This was even more unpleasant than the first time her memories had been rooted around in. She was an Immortal now, godsdamnit. She should have some control over-
***
Jian glared out at the valley. She was distracted enough she barely noticed Elijah coming up behind her, until she felt him place his jacket over her shoulders.
That surprised her.
“I wasn’t cold?”
He shrugged and sat down next to her. “You looked cold.”
“You’re not used to being in the Asthenic Realm, Elijah. We can just circulate qi if we get cold.” Jian rubbed the crinkly material of the jacket between her fingers. It was still as foreign as the strange shoes he’d been wearing when she found him.
“And you know I said you shouldn’t show this to anyone in the village. The text alone stands out like a sore thumb.”
He rolled his eyes. “We’re far enough away. There’s nobody watching out here.”
She sighed. “Always assume someone is watching. It’ll keep you alive.”
“You keep it then.” He said, surprising her again.
“Isn’t this important to you?”
He snorted. “Not in the slightest. Without the air conditioning script working, it’s worthless. Just a memento of a place I’d rather leave behind. Besides, your freaky shadow inventory thing is probably a better place to hide it than anywhere I could come up with, and you seemed interested in it. Consider it a gift.”
“Did you really just call it worthless and then call it a gift?”
“I’m a romance savant. You’re welcome.”
“That’s mentioning you called my Shadow Vault Technique a ‘freaky shadow inventory thing?’”
“Am I wrong?”
She sighed and leaned against him, not bothering to respond.
“Hmm. Still mad at the village Elder?”
She sighed again. “I’m not mad. I expected something like this to be honest, there had to be a reason that the Elder wasn’t already in the Liminal Realm himself. His gratitude for his grandson’s rescue was genuine enough that I’m not overly suspicious. I’m just annoyed at the delay. We’re so close. It’s been years since I last took a step on my path, and the Liminal Realm is a big one.”
“Right, right. Doubled lifespan and all that.”
“Triple! It’s triple, Hells take you! And it increases with each step you take within the realm!”
“Right, yes, it’s all very impressive.”
“You don’t sound suitably impressed. Grovel more. Put some wonder in your voice. At least try to make it sound like you care.”
He shrugged at her, infuriatingly. “It just doesn’t sound like a very organized way to determine how long someone should live. I’m not sure how finding a Divine Well in the wilderness shows any merit to your community. It’s so arbitrary. I’m not sure I’ll feel like I earned it.”
Jian covered her face with her hands. “Dream Well, not Divine. Gaia Below, I hate you sometimes.”
Elijah laughed. “Sorry, sorry, it’s still just a lot to take in. I’ll get better at remembering.”
Jian sighed. She was getting used to sighing a lot around him.
“By the way, I heard something on the way here.”
“Something important?”
He nodded sagely, suddenly serious. “Very. You see, I was told that you started teaching the kids in the village how to play the flute.”
Jian blinked. “Oh. Well yes, before the Elder gave me his request I had some free time. I’m not sure how that’s important.”
“It’s super important!” He exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air. “I don’t think you realize just how curious I am about how different your music here is! From what the kids told me, I think even the shape of the instrument is different. We also have something called a flute, but it’s not quite the same shape, and I don’t think you use the pentatonic scale either. Plus, the kids also want another lesson!”
“Do the kids want a lesson, or do you?”
“Definitely the kids. Though, between us, I think they just want to hear you play and get some free candy. I was hoping you could indulge them so I could sit in on the class.”
“Hmm, teaching a class of clueless, naive, children? Yeah, sounds like you’d fit right in.”
“Ha.”
***
“Faster.” Jian said, blocking Elijah’s punch with her palm.
He grunted and sped up, each of his next three blows quicker than the last.
“Better, but still sloppy.” Jian pushed aside his last punch and he stumbled forward. She leaned into his guard, slipping past his clumsy block before tapping his neck with the edge of her hand. “Don’t overcommit, stay balanced.”
Elijah sighed as he reset his stance. “Yes, Illustrious Sage.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Yes, Honored Elder.”
“Do you want me to start punching you back? I’ll do it.”
“Please don’t.”
“Then stop talking and start punching. Again.”
The second time went better. Elijah was already surprisingly good with a sword, despite his absurd claims of mediocrity, but that was no reason to ignore basic martial arts. True, the way his Resonances worked meant he’d always have a sword in easy reach, but drawing a sword was still an escalation. Sometimes a few gentle taps to dissuade someone was the wiser approach.
And after the investment she’d made in him, she’d feel more comfortable knowing he could throw a good punch.
***
Jian paused when she realized Elijah had fallen behind. She jostled, shifting the weight of the unconscious boy on her back a little higher so that he wouldn’t slip. He and his clothes were still a deathly shade of pale white, as if the blood echo had leached him of all his color, but she thought his skin looked a little better than it had earlier. Maybe he wasn’t a completely lost cause after all.
That was good. She would’ve carried a corpse home if it made Elijah think better of her, after what she’d seen him do she wanted his power tied as closely to herself as possible, but if the boy actually survived then the village Elder would have to be more grateful, and she could leverage that. He had implied he knew the location of a Sacred Well of Water, and she’d do anything to get her hands on it.
She turned back to Elijah, only to see him staring out at the valley, stupefied. They were currently crossing across the root of an enormous tree, treating the two-meter wide length of wood like a bridge as the root swelled up over the more mundane forest. Knowing Elijah’s line-of-sight limitations, she’d recommended taking higher vantage points whenever possible, and this one did offer a particularly good view of the valley.
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The mists were thick, draped between the karsts that broke up the valley like multi-layered veils tied between posts of rock, and wherever the mists broke the green trees sparkled from the dew it left behind in their leaves. Every so often, one of the mountain spurs was wrapped in thick tree roots as enormous trees wrapped their trunks around them and spread their canopies over the valley, breaking up the light and further trapping the mists below. She’d been in the area long enough to get used to the sight, so she’d forgive Elijah being stunned.
Until she realized he was shaking.
“Elijah? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t want to go back.” He whispered.
Jian frowned and followed his gaze, peering into the fog between distant mountains.
And then one of the mountains moved.
Jian froze, the sound of her heartbeat suddenly overwhelming. There was a shape in the mists, enormous and serpentine. Another mountain shifted, and she realized it was a pair of wings, held close. It was only a silhouette, but Jian knew exactly what she was looking at and the scale terrified her. This was the reason why only the desperate lived so close to the Ivory Wastes.
“Just stay still.” She whispered, trying not to move herself. “It won’t-”
But Elijah wasn’t listening. His knees were shaking, and a plea left his lips.
“Oh Empre-”
Jian dived at him, fear flooding her brain with adrenaline. She dropped the boy from her back, completely forgotten, and crossed the distance to Elijah before he could finish damning them both. Her hands wrapped around his mouth as she drove him to the ground, slamming his back against the hard bark of the tree root. She hissed to cover any sound that escaped his lips, shushing him.
“Impressive.” She said loudly, panic straining her voice before she dropped back to a whisper. “You were about to say the sight is very impressive, Elijah. That’s it. That’s the only word that was about to come out of your mouth, understand?”
Jian was furious, her hands were shaking. Was he really so ignorant, that he would say the word ‘Empress’ within sight of the Warden? The last time someone had tried to declare themselves an Empress, finding the title in long-forgotten historical texts, the Warden had wiped their entire city off the map. People always said you could whisper the word on its own without Divine Judgement striking you down, but nobody did. It wasn’t worth the risk. Especially not here. Not so close to the Warden’s Garden.
Elijah nodded shakily beneath her hands and Jian looked to where they’d seen the Warden’s shadow crossing, but the space between the mountains was empty now. It had left, and they were still alive.
Jian sighed with relief.
At least that went a long way to confirming her theory on Elijah’s origins.
***
Jian crouched behind a thicket of coral, looking at a scene that was creeping towards becoming a full Nightmare.
This bubble of reality had once been a Dream, but it had been broken at least a decade or two ago, if she had to guess. Whatever had caused that damage had carved a column of open air through dozens of layers of coral, exposing the pink and blue innards of the maze like the sediment along a canyon wall. At the top of the column, she could see the faint shimmer where the two realities met, a veil as thin and clear as a soap bubble. It was the only place in this maze where they could see the outside world.
Which meant it was their best way out.
However, at the bottom of the prospective escape shaft, the Nightmare grew, complete with a nascent Lord. Ten meters below them the coral stopped, leaving only the Wound, a deep pit, edges lined with pulsing red flesh, bleeding divine ichor. All of the Broken Dream’s thousand tributaries flowed into the pit, the water long stained a deep crimson by the time it poured over the edges. Within the pit, a new type of coral grew in shades of white and gray, with streaks of black and red forming platforms and bridges.
The Nightmare Lord stalked those thin walkways.
It loosely held a human shape, still barely formed. Its flesh was wet and slick, a weeping red, with something that might have been ink-black clothes draped over it. It had no face, only two curling horns of bone white. It carried a black brush in one hand, and a wide painter's pallet in the other.
It had covered one of the walls in a smooth expanse of flat coral, and treated it like a canvas. And, with the touch of a master, it had painted the Infinite Heavens.
Black paint soaked into the coral, creating a featureless backdrop, but scattered across it were a thousand riotous points of light and blooms of color. Spheres spiraling with blues and whites or reds and yellows, colorful streaks made to look like a thick scattering of dust, and stark pinpricks of white light behind everything.
It was a different view than she’d seen before, a different angle maybe. It was likely just a representation of what could be, a falsehood pulled from imagination rather than fact, but it still tugged at something inside Jian. It felt as if, at any moment, the painting would cease to be a painting and become a window. Or perhaps a door.
The boy, Elijah, gasped beside her.
“What is it doing to him?” He whispered.
Damn, Jian had been hoping he wouldn’t notice. She refocused her attention from the creature’s masterpiece to its victim.
Near the Lord’s feet, lay another boy. He was stretched out, limp, unconscious, and bleeding color. The Nightmare Lord leaned down, its arm stretching unnaturally long, to dip its brush into the boy’s chest. It sunk into his skin like a ripple, and when it came back out, the boy’s color came with it.
His body jerked, and was left a shade paler. His skin was already whiter than a corpse, and even his clothes had been leeched, with barely any swirls of blue and brown left on the ripped silk. Even his hair had turned white, only the tips held any remaining hints of black.
“Whatever it’s doing, it’s been going on for a while.” Jian replied. “If the boy isn’t dead yet, he will be soon.”
“He’s still breathing.”
Elijah turned to her, a desperate hope in his eyes, like she was the last bastion he could turn to, as if she could never let him down.
“So what’s the plan?” He asked, breathless.
“What?”
“To save him. I don’t want to fuck it up and slow you down, so just tell me what you need me to do and where you need me. I can play support.”
Jian bit her lip.
The correct thing to do here was to leave. The victim was as good as dead already, and the Lord was distracted below them. Its eyes had never once left its painting, even when harvesting new paint. She was confident she could slip past and, given what she’d seen Elijah do, he could too. A single flex of his Resonance and they could both be gone in an instant.
The half-dead boy had to be the village elder’s grandson, and they would surely be rewarded for saving him, but was that enough to risk her life? To save a presumably innocent life, and get paid for it?
No. Not even close. That thing looked dangerous.
If they left him though, then where would that leave them?
With Elijah’s naivety, he would see running as a failure at best, or a betrayal at worst. If she was right about him, she needed to keep him close, bound to her. She needed him to keep looking at her with blind trust and hope, needed it in a way that hurt. It wasn’t sentimentality, it was strategy. Was securing his loyalty worth the risk?
She looked at the Nightmare Lord again.
Maybe.
Could she actually kill it though? It didn’t look any stronger than the boar that had terrorized her selection exam years ago. Yan Feng had barely managed to repel it at the time, but if she fought that boar again now, could she win?
Yes, she thought so, but it would still be risky. Too risky.
Could she mitigate that?
She reached into the shadow of her sleeves and rubbed her fingers against something small and impossibly sharp. She thought back to the cuts on the blood beast Elijah had fled from, how perfectly smooth they were.
She looked at the boy beside her, looked at the way he stared at her. It would be a big investment, absurdly so, but it would put Elijah deeply in her debt. It would bind him to her more tightly than anything else she could think of, and it would lower the chance of failure.
Yes, this could work.
She pulled out the Sword Gem that had almost been Wei’s.
“Okay, here’s the plan.”
***
Jian ran through the maze as fast as she could, chasing the hunter and its quarry both. She jumped into shadows to squeeze through cracks in the coral, feeling the gaps and pathways that snaked through the Broken Dream by feeling the contours of their shadows.
Light and water worked strangely here. A thousand rivulets and streams of water ran through the forest of pastel colored coral, often clinging to the walls and ceiling of the organic tunnels in defiance of gravity. Intermittent spurs of coral glowed with a soft violet hue, the light catching in the omnipresent mist and slowly dripping through the air like honey.
It was not how light was supposed to work, pouring into vessels like liquid, and it wrought havoc on the shadows. They formed slowly and haphazardly, often wiped out and reformed like a wave; the entire area was covered in dappled and shifting light as if she were deep underwater. The shadowed surfaces she had to work with were almost as much a maze as the coral forest itself.
But she didn’t let that slow her, leaping and sprinting on her own two legs when shadows were scarce.
She tried to follow the scent of blood, but the deeper she went, the harder that became, because it was all around her. She began to pass more and more rents in the coral, cracks weeping red, all facing the same direction. The blood mixed with the water coating the walls, staining it and leaving streaks of red.
She followed the flow, deeper towards the center.
She felt someone step on a shadow connected to hers and adjusted her direction, but while the hunter moved in straight lines, crashing through walls of coral and leaving traces of destruction behind, their mutual quarry moved erratically. She saw strangely textured footprints, red streaks left on the occasional piece of raised and drier coral, but they were few and far between.
Eventually, she got close enough to see why.
The boy sprinted ahead of her, flickering through the tunnel like a mirage. He would run for a time, exhaustion and an injured ankle making it so he didn’t move any faster than a brisk limp, but then he would disappear. Between one stride and the next, without a moment in between, he would reappear twenty meters down the hall.
It was ridiculous.
It was absurd.
There was no medium, no Resonance that could explain it. He was not jumping through water, nor turning his body into light, or anything else that would be improbable for someone so weak, but still technically possible. Jian herself had focused her interpretation of shadows to concentrate on stealth and mobility, a mobility that she’d never seen matched by anyone mortal.
Yet, despite a soul that felt a full Realm weaker than hers, she was confident this boy would outrun her easily if it wasn’t for his injuries.
She followed him cautiously, keeping him at the edge of her sight without losing him. She reached out through the shadows around him, and then she felt it. Just as he flickered, all of the shadows in front of him suddenly felt closer together. Like they were tighter, or narrower, or compressed.
Was he compressing space?
Was it even possible to Resonate with space?
Her heartbeat quickened. If his Resonance really was space, the substance of the Infinite Heavens themselves, then maybe she was right. Maybe he really-
A howl broke her thoughts, echoing through the maze, setting the mists vibrating and shaking drops of light and water out of the air.
She saw the boy look back, fear covering his face. She saw the moment his foot caught on a piece of coral he didn’t see, heard the yelp of surprise and the crack as he fell on coral too light to hold his weight.
He fell.
Jian jumped after him.
She entered at an angle, crossing through the air to slip into the shadows unnoticed. There were no luminous spurs of coral here, only the shaft of light slowly dripping from the hole the boy had created in the ceiling. It pooled on his crumpled body, slowly spreading out from him as he groaned and leveraged himself onto his elbows.
He was too slow.
His hunter stalked out of the shadows, ugly and unnatural. It almost looked like an ape, but it had the head of a lizard and skin that glistened with wet looking red scales. It held a sinuous tail out behind it to counterbalance its top-heavy torso and had once had four arms, but two had been sheared off, little more than stumps dripping black blood. It leaned heavily to the left, its knuckles digging into the ground as it loped forward.
Jian moved.
She thrust her sword out of the shadow below it, spearing it through the jaw and pulling her sword back into the shadow faster than its caustic blood could fall on her. She stepped out of another shadow to its side, her arms already mid swing, and cut through the beast’s neck faster than gravity could claim its corpse.
She stepped away as it finally collapsed, keeping her feet away from the slowly spreading pool of blood as it hissed and fizzled, eating away at the coral beneath it. She looked at her handiwork and frowned. The kill had been clean, her strikes smooth, but, when she compared the stumps of its arms with the stump of its neck, the cut on its arms were even smoother. Impossibly, unnaturally, smooth.
She stepped up to the boy- no, the young man. She almost smiled at the stupefied look on his face, but it was marred by the pain he was clearly in. Beast blood had splashed over him, eating holes through his undershirt and strange pants and leaving burn scars everywhere they touched. His neck and part of his cheek were an angry red, pulling half his face into a grimace even as his jaw hung open.
He carried no weapon, and only his jacket was unharmed, a pale golden light emanating from the bands around his sleeves and the script across its back. As she looked at him, the light flickered and died, leaving him looking slightly smaller.
She bent down and reached out her hand, letting herself smile when he reached back.
It felt good to play the role of savior again.
***
Jian looked out over the valley. She’d come looking for rumors of a Dream Well, but it was starting to look like she was a decade or two too late. The village elder had implied he knew where one was, but from what she’d been able to piece together from his obtuse speech and rumors around town, it would have to be purified in some way before it could be pulled from.
With Beasts made of animated ink and blood running around? So close to where the Deicide was said to have been struck down? It made sense that if there was a Dream here big enough to form a Dream Well, it was likely well on its way to becoming a Nightmare. It was probably just a lost cause.
Still, she could at least try to find the missing kid, maybe get some kind of reward out of it before she left. As long as it wasn’t too dangerous. Assuming he was even alive.
She looked up and paused, eyes widening.
For a brief instant, a window opened in the Firmament.
It was small and far away, a rectangle outlined in crackling lines of pitch black lightning, but through it she could see impossibilities. A waterfall going nowhere. A metal bridge. A black sky scattered with a thousand blooms of light.
For the first time in her life, Jian saw the glory of the Infinite Heavens.
And then someone fell through it.
They tumbled, head over heels, arms flailing, and with a final surge of black lightning the window closed behind them. They had already fallen hundreds of meters towards the ground before Jian realized she was holding her breath.
Then two more windows opened, just over the tree-line.
These were smaller, without any dramatic or divine lightning heralding its opening, and on the other side was the ground. She could see the tops of what had to be the same trees she could see in the distance, reflected like a mirror.
The falling figure moved its arms, angling their body to catch the wind and fall directly into one of the windows. Then they disappeared, and reappeared from the other window.
Only now, they were falling up.
They climbed higher into the sky, but not as high as they’d first appeared. Air resistance must’ve slowed them down. She watched, fascinated, as the figure repeatedly fell through the windows in the world, each time bleeding some momentum before gravity reclaimed them. Until, finally, the windows winked out and they fell out of sight.
What the fuck was that?