“And here I had come to fear the young master had forgotten about us,” says the voice of his hatred, crawling out from the dark. “What a world we find ourselves in, that the whims of our betters can so easily wipe us from their eyes. Truly, the most honorable thing would be to end it all right now, and find ourselves a better nobility than to have our host come and beg us for scraps.”
The second of his demons says nothing, but he can hear the crackling and popping of fat burning up. She sounds like the crisping of pork belly, and if it was not so vile and burnt and full of offal, might smell like it too.
Here, in the dark, he sees them. For the first time, he invites them. In the depths of his soul, meditating deep into his meridians and the trance-like state cultivation can bring, he looks at that which has grown inside him, and comes to know them.
The first of the heart demons still looks like him, but subtly off, slightly skewed and changed. While his own self-image hasn’t come through his journey of his self-immolation intact, the first heart demon wears the skin of the young master. Gorgeous to look at, but fragile, somehow, skin slightly waxen and porcelain, physique slightly malnourished, and the state of his robes resplendent and overdone to the point of garishness. He lounges there, the corners and indistinct angles of the cultivator’s trance leaving him space to lie, draped across parts of Shin Ren’s soul like a satisfied feline. The heart demon smiles at the look Shin Ren gives him, waving a hand over his own form.
“Don’t like?” asks the specter. “I spent so long on this look, too. Or maybe you gave it to me. Hard to tell where things end or begin, isn’t it? Have you figured it out yet? Am I an infection, young master? A parasite? How else have you framed us in this… dizzying display of a mind?”
Shin Ren looks around. It’s… strange, existing as a person within himself. All around, there is a dense, shadowy fog that obfuscates everything. He can feel his meridians, sense his Qi, even shift slightly in response to feeling his master pick up another brick, but here he can see, and all around them, there is the darkness of an unlit room.
And, at the corner of his eye, her. The burnt one. Still burning, sizzling, crackling, just out of view.
“If I have framed you too poorly, thing that haunts my soul, I am sorry,” Shin Ren says. “If I have harmed you in the telling of our state, then you have my apologies. I’ve… never tried this before. To see things like this. Maybe when I was forming my Core, but never- never as myself, perhaps.”
The smiling demon laughs. “And your master would tell you as much. Pretty little Shin Ren, blood of sect royalty, in the academies by thirteen, in the Core Formation realm by eighteen, almost past it in just two more years. Unstoppable! And so, entirely, blatantly ignorant of what you’ve missed. All the names you’ve forgotten, all the techniques and skills and thoughts you never had to learn. I would say it’s a shame, but one should never be ashamed of the privilege of being born. No matter how they use that privilege, no?”
Shin Ren shakes his head. “I think I know more about what you are, now. Since I created you, as you and master keep telling me. But your thoughts were never mine. I never considered myself better than other people, not like whatever you insinuate. I worked hard to become what I was, and I don’t think I was wrong to experience life as I was born into it.”
“Maybe you never thought such things out loud,” the smiling demon replies. “Not bright and clear in that pretty little conscious head of yours. But you felt it. You knew it, deep down, where we were born. If there can be lies of omission, why not truths of omission?”
“No. I wasn’t you. I wasn’t this. I pursued nobility, and honor, and I did so earnestly and with mercy in my-”
The smell of burning doubles, the hissing of sizzling flesh magnified, and she steps closer, the sound of her walking too wet and too dry and too wrong. Shin Ren does not turn to look.
“Was it mercy?” she asks, her voice garbled and bubbling in her own molten flesh. “Was it earnesty? How my tongue sizzled? How my flesh blistered and popped?”
“...No.”
The smiling demon laughs out loud, the sound of it echoing in the empty dark. “Is that all, my lord? No? Such a simple statement, so insecurely delivered. At last, it would seem, something of what we all share has gotten through your thick skull.”
“It was meant in kindness,” Shin Ren whispers. “I thought- I didn’t know that she would suffer. I thought her flesh close to mortal, my flames… suited to the task. A single instant, and then ash. I never meant for it to hurt.”
“It was fire,” she crackles and snarls in his ear. “Fire always hurts.”
He breathes deep. Breathes out. Feels the panic, the fear, the anxiety at that voice, so fucking close, and just breathes for a while.
Neither of his heart demons interrupt.
For a little while, there is only the sound of breathing, and a small but growing center of calm.
Slowly, Shin Ren stands more upright. Straightens his back. Summons once again to his mind the broken pieces of who he once thought he was. He holds them for a little while, before looking back up at the smiling demon, that is no longer smiling.
“What are you doing?” it asks.
Shin Ren sighs. “You’re right. You’re both right.”
Neither thing speaks.
“You,” he says, facing the smiling, wealthy caricature of himself, “you were first. Maybe not as powerful, maybe not as damaging as her, but your seeds are planted deep. I thought myself honorable. I thought myself noble. I pursued those ideals, but I was neither, and I knew it, and I lied to myself. I knew I was an executioner’s blade against an innocent neck when I walked into that arena. I knew that my place in the sect had not been earned by the values I sought. And I challenged neither. I made honor and nobility suit me, rather than changing myself to suit them, as I should have. As is growth. You are that part of me, the part that dresses itself in the finery of wisdom, of honor, of pride, and does nothing to earn them, has not the substance to hold them. You are my mirror. I was a tool of corruption and dishonorable practices, the beneficiary of injustice, and rather than confront these things I shaped my belief of the world to suit what I wanted to be true.”
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He walks forward, hearing and feeling the burning corpse keeping pace less than a half step behind them, but refusing to turn to look. Slowly, at the foot of where the heart demon lounges, now curling in on itself and staring at him with wide eyes, he places pieces of his shattered Core.
“I give you my ego,” he whispers. “My pride. My unearned sense of moral superiority. The idea that I was already good, and that any question to this must be false.”
As he speaks, pieces flow like liquid into each other, forming a long, spiraling whole like a horn, its edges like glass worn down by sand or time.
“You are me as I was, at my worst, without the nuance of intention or the light of ideals. I am sorry you exist. I am glad you are here.”
And then, with one more long, slow breath, he turns to the thing behind him.
It is flesh and charcoal both, carbon fused into multiple forms by the kiss of heat. It is shorter than him now, vulnerable looking, but its body is long past life or even utility. The heat has warped its bones, forcing it to curl inward on itself, and even as he watches, smoke crawls from gaps in its body where the flame ate holes through her, where he can see glistening red and cracked, broken black. Its eyes run like water down its face, burned until the jelly is like runny eggs, so that it weeps as he finally lets himself look upon it without hesitation or fear.
It is him. It is his.
“What am I, then?” it asks, its voice cadaverous, like the crackling of dead flame. “What lesson will you make of what you did to her?”
He smiles softly, even as he cries. “You are the mirror to my other half. If he is who I was, pulled through my own shame, you are what I was, what power I held, put up to the truth. He is my self. You are my love. You are the flame.”
It grins, its teeth stained black and grey by ash and red by blood. “Ah, but I’m not purple. Not pretty. Not something mysterious and wonderful. I am the ash you made of someone who screamed when you hurt her. I am the blood of someone that suffered under your flame.”
He nods. “My fire was never true. I was in love with the mystery, the strangeness, the beauty of the Purple Flame, of the greater ideals my sect taught me of. But you’re right. Fire hurts. It burns. It doesn’t just transform, it destroys. It doesn’t just grow, it consumes. It is beautiful. I still hold this in my heart. I do not regret being of the flame. But I did not let myself see it for what it is, just as I did not see myself.”
Slowly, the burning corpse, the heart demon of his regret… nods. And says nothing.
“I sought the highest mysteries, embraced what is impossible and strange and all the more divine for it, and never let myself see what it grows from. The Purple Flame is not in isolation. Flame is flame. I have no excuse for letting myself forget that, for allowing myself not to know that. When I tried to use it to arrogantly grant mercy, when I tried to use it for a kind, painless end, I failed myself, and I failed my cultivation, and I failed the very same mystery I have pursued for so long.”
He kneels, and gives unto the ground before his burning demon the shards that are hers.
“I give you my naivete. My ignorance, willingly enforced. My obsession, and my blindness.”
As he watches, the pieces of the core burn, and melt, and swirl together, like a spiral, one of its lines jutting out like the blade of a knife.
“I am sorry you exist. I am glad you are here.”
He steps to the side, so that he can see both of them. Both his demons look at him, their forms shifting and warping, their bodies slowly fading to match the shadows around them.
“What now?” the burning corpse asks.
“Now… now I think you should choose.”
Both of their eyes widen, and for a moment, their dissipation stops.
“What?” asks the heart demon that looks like him.
“I think… I think the expectation is for you both to fade. I accept my guilt, my shame, and my understanding, and I grow, having moved past this blockage. But that doesn’t feel right to me. If I created you, then it is only right that I take responsibility. To ignore you, or to let you fade, just because it benefits me now? It brings to mind the very same arrogance and selfish view that brought you both to be. I don’t want to be that person anymore. I’m not that person anymore. Letting you simply die for my will, it… it unmakes part of that step, and it is not the road I want to tread.”
“Even if the new road burns?” she asks, the sizzle of her flesh long silent.
“Even so. Let it burn. If it is the right path, even if it may hurt, it is the path I want to walk. I do not know if you are truly alive, truly thinking, but you are of my soul, and you speak, and so now, unmoored, fading, I ask- what do you want?”
Silence, for a long, long moment. The swirling of dark fog. The glow of flickering molten glass, still bright from the heat of transformation.
Slowly, the illusion of himself sits upright, and then down to its knees, and picks up the glowing, molten thing he has made of his Core. The horn sits, curved like a ram’s but too smooth to be.
“Well,” he says, “I’d rather not just die, if I had the choice. I think. I’m… not sure how that works. I think I was fine with it a moment ago, when it felt like you were, but… if I have a choice, I’d like to live.”
Shin Ren nods. And waits.
The burnt body lowers itself, moment by painful moment, down towards the spiral-handled dagger-
He steps forward and picks it up, offering it to her rather than watch her stutter and break in the attempt to kneel. He expects her to grab it, maybe, hold it, but instead, she grabs his wrist. Her hand is hot to the touch, painful, sharp like bits of gravel and glass, and before he can understand what she is doing, she pulls his hand in towards her chest.
The dagger of molten matter, of glass and steel and flame and concept, pierces where her heart would be, and rests there, as if it was always meant to sit in such a place. She rises, more fluid, the flames of her crackling corpse beginning to rekindle from ash and smoke and charcoal-black flesh.
“I do not know if I want, as you might want,” she says. “But I am flame, and I am burning, and it is not the nature of a burning thing, or of the fire which consumes it, to go quiet and still.”
He smiles, and takes a step back.
“I’ll take it,” he whispers.
And then he opens his eyes, and ducks a fresh tile arcing over where his head would have been.
He turns to look at Qu Haolan, who has a look of curiosity and a small smile to his face.
“Well, student? How did your little nap go?”
Shin Ren looks down at his hand, still bandaged but mostly healed from his burns. Slowly, he raises it, palm up, and focuses. He does not ignite his Qi. He does not breathe his soul into the world. He simply takes a drop of his life force, of who he is, of that which is the blood of the world but which is called Qi, and feeds it to his understanding.
Like a spark finally lit, like a burst of ignition, like a long-delayed conflagration, his Dao of Flame turns the minute drop of Qi into a true, burning light, hovering over his hand, independent of his Qi or Cultivation. It glows yellow, then red, then blue, then white, its edges hinting at further colors beyond, at the gold of truth, at the purple of mystery. With a thought, he severs the flow of Qi to the concept he now holds at least partially complete, and even still, the flame dwindles slowly, drinking oxygen as much as it did Qi, just like a real fire, yet held, perfect and his, in the palm of his hand.
“I’d say it went well, master,” he says with a smile. “Strange, but well. And that there is further still left to go.”