Mian wished that he'd been given more time to think things through, but then, he'd wasted most of his life already. But... he'd already decided that, for better or worse, he'd committed to a choice. Of course, he'd done that once before--leaving everything to follow Alassi. He had come to believe that there was hope, and he was willing to trust again, but...

...But some part of this was terrifying, setting out with so little sense of a plan, of a path. It was the kind of fear that, if he were still the boy he used to be, would have crushed him entirely. Now that he was older, rather than being braver, he simply... had less faith that finding the 'right' path was necessary, or at least, less belief that he needed to believe, feel that the path was right. What he did have faith in was that he needed to dedicate himself to something, before he fell so far behind that there was no more hope.

He... understood what the mystic closet woman was saying about this Hundred Hearts Tonic. He even thought there was an unspoken message there--that she understood that he had not found himself, even if he was willing to burn away his future potential in order to advance just far enough. It wouldn't be hard for him to simply accept any and all qi, building himself up and up... until he could no longer stand himself.

Before he had crumpled at finding Alassi broken, he had been nearly at the peak of Silver Qi, eagerly wondering what lay beyond the Golden Ridge, but had regressed almost to nothing over the many years, caring nothing for qi nor stability. He had tried to press forward as he had in his youth, and failed. His heart and body were different, now. But in which ways?

If there was an answer, doubtless, the medicine he had been given would provde it. It was... expensive, he understood. Far more than he had earned. And some childish fear warned him away from it, but once he was there, at the Sect's Gale Pavillion, he found that he had no hesitation. Doubts, yes, and heart demons, most assuredly, but no hesitation.

Taking the tonic and settling in to cultivate seemed simply rote, and he all but ignored Ki'el sitting there, watching him. He knew that she meant well, and knew that he would be nowhere and nothing without her, but he needed to understand himself, master himself. And if he failed to accomplish that... it wouldn't be because she distracted him.

He had barely begun to notice signs of a trance when he thought he heard footsteps.

His efforts to wake up from the trance to investigate only pulled him deeper, and before he knew it, he was turning to face a man wearing a demon mask, an overdramatic thing meant to evoke terror, and although Mian was startled, he calmed at seeing the mask, because it was simply too over-the-top.

But there were other footsteps, and he turned, seeing other masked people, each of different sizes and shapes, each with different masks. But turning away was dangerous, because when he took his eyes of the man with the demon mask, he felt the man's footsteps, turned to find him much closer--but now, no longer moving. The masked man was frozen in the act of rushing at Mian.

But in the process, he took his eyes off the other masks, and heard their footsteps rushing at him.

The first touch of one of those masked people made a lance of pain shoot through Mian's head and heart, and he fought back, throwing himself away from the creature, but too late--in that moment, his head and heart were changed, and he was despondant, miserable, empty. His whole life had been nothing, and he was no one. Mian blinked several times as though to banish tears, but his eyes were already dry, the tears long spent.

Throwing himself away let him turn to see the masked man--no, woman?--who had touched him, and Mian almost thought he saw a real face behind the mask, but it blurred away, replaced with a cringing face mask that... that if Mian were honest, matched his face, or what his face should be, here, now. The mask of misery, of... but no, that word alone was not enough. What was the right name? The right face?

There were more sounds in the far distance, and Mian tore his eyes away from one face to see more in the middle and far distance, but the next masked man to touch him was the demon mask--and Mian felt focus narrow to almost nothing. No--not to nothing, never to nothing; it narrowed to the one thing. But what name did it deserve? Hatred? Vengeance? Fury?

Mian's fist knocked the demon mask away, but there was another hand--no, a whole arm that emerged from the ground, this one definitely female, and it wrapped around his leg, pulling him down to pull her up, and her mask was ugly, but not as ugly as the feeling that sped through Mian's body. A feeling like Mian had already missed his chance, or worse... had never had a chance, from the moment he was born. That he would go on to watch others rise forever, while he stood still.

For a minute, Mian thought he saw his face behind that mask, but kicked the grasping creature away, trying to push off, hoping to find any solace in this entire place. But another hand grasped his back, fingers digging into flesh in a way that would be impossible in reality--unless they carved enormous rents through his skin and tore apart muscles and bones. But it only siezed him from behind, this feeling of holding on for just one more moment, just one more, to that feeling of being special, knowing that it would not last.

How long had elapsed, Mian wondered. Seconds? Each touch was agony, but not a single touch lasted more than a moment. He batted away the desperate hold on his spine, only to run into--

To run into serenity.

The mask that he stumbled upon wore his own face easily, and it was him, and he was it, and for that lovely moment, he simply faced himself. And then it tilted its head, in salute or sympathy, and Mian felt that he was falling over backwards. What he saw, when he tumbled enough to be able to look downwards, was a sea of faces all looking up at him, with a thousand masks, a million. Too many.

How many had he endured? Five? A hundred? He was already unable to remember.

When he landed in the pile, though, there was a hand on his shoulder, and it was Ki'el, and she was helping a cooling feeling flow through him. He wondered, for a moment, what mask this was, but another hand took him--and yet the cooling flow stayed, keeping just one small part of him separate, keeping him just barely sane.

It was three or four masks after that first touch that Mian began to understand that the cool energy was real, and he used it as best he could to ground himself in the moment, rather than panicking as each new hand grasped at him. He... began to notice, too, that there was qi behind each of the hands, and qi within himself. When the hands, or claws, or feet, or whatever else grasped him, they pushed more energy than he could stand into his body--but he also lost something, and he wasn't sure what.

Agony and astonished joy. Wry humor and feverish hunger. Exhaustion, elation, confusion, irritation. Ecstacy, for a moment, though it felt wrong, unpleasant. Deep and abiding love, though it flashed by too quickly. Warm sunlight. The strange pleasure of being buried, safely, in the ground. The unparalleled terror and pain of standing on a floor so hot that his feet vanished instantly, and his legs crumpled inch by inch with nothing he could do but scream.

Drowning to death. Swimming in a pristine lake. Performing on stage. Murdering someone in the night. Being murdered, Mian thought, by himself. Being a child and jumping for the sheer joy of jumping. The taste of candy. A shattered limb.

In a way, Mian began to wish that the cool sensation that kept reminding him of who he was, of how he was only a passenger on this journey, would go away, and let him be consumed entirely. What was the value of a man like him at all, much less in a world with so many terrible things in it?

When he had had that thought a few times--maybe twice, maybe twenty times--he began to see more and more people around him not wearing masks. And although some of them were taller, and some of them fatter, and some of them women, and some of them beasts... they all had Mian's face. Their faces were still emblematic of what they were--of that feeling that coursed through their veins--and sometimes they had other things. Scars. Burns. Cuts. Missing pieces. But they all wore his face.

Even so, he could not understand, and could not endure.

It was perhaps a year later, perhaps minutes, that Mian, who had long since stopped being able to resist and throw off the phantasms, heard footsteps, but different ones. He cocked his head to the side, unsure what he was hearing, but turned, a cape made of clinging monsters swirling behind him as he did, his body mutilated and some parts of him replaced with those things that were consuming him.

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"Oh... hello, love." The words felt as empty to him as ashes, as his mood flickered from the thrill of the hunt to sitting under a tree in the rain. The Xoi Xam that was before him wore a strange mask, or too many of them--he wasn't sure. They were all blending together into a strange mash now, too many occurring too fast for him to understand.

"Are these...?" Xam's voice felt distant, like the light through the surface of a pond, waving even when things should have been still. "Did you...?"

"Did I?" Mian didn't understand the question, but looked down at his hands, which were... hands. Not made of monsters, though they would be again, he was sure. "Am I surviving?"

"Are those..." Xam's voice was doubting, and now Mian was charging headlong into death, content to die with his best friend, but no--he survived, and they did not. A burden of guilt so heavy that he could not... "...are those all the things that you've experienced?"

Mian looked up at her, the coolness in his spirit reminding him again that he wasn't actually alone. But why would Ki'el show him an image of his wife? Or had something gone wrong? Was his cultivation session broken? Had he failed and gone insane? A feeling came over him, one he was already familiar with. "Ah... ?" He cringed, identifying the thought, but powerless to do anything about it.

"The ones with your face. Are they the ones you have already felt? Already been?"

Mian looked around him, and saw now that the monsters around him, though the swirled and merged together, though they came and went like waves, could still be divided into masks... and beings with his face. But also... there were others, where he thought he saw other faces. Xam's. Sobon's. Ki'el's. Shadows of them, but shadows that felt too real to ignore. "Those faces..."

The footsteps beside him now were different from the ones in his earliest dream. They were not the sound of something pursuing him, chasing him, ready to pounce. They were plodding, heavy. Familiar... familial. He felt his head cock to the side, too tired to respond, but there were hands on his arms, then on his hands. Cool fingers that took his own.

Though he was scared, Mian turned to look.

The masks that crowded Xam's face and competed for space underneath her flesh all wore her own face. Pride, misery, madness, confusion, angst. But when Mian clutched her fingers tighter, thinking that perhaps, just perhaps, she was really here, he saw the expression change, the masks moving out of the way for one feeling that he knew, that he had only experienced for a fleeting moment.

Hope.

If Mian hadn't experienced that one feeling among an exhausting tide of others, he might still be cynical, thinking of hope as the thing that had led him astray earlier in life. But hope was hope, and although he was too burnt out to understand, to really be able to tell what was going on inside his own heart, he was sure that hope wasn't the problem.

Although he had to compete with the twisted masks, Mian began to push a feeling forward in his own heart, a feeling of contentment and hope for himself, for his own future. If Xam feels hope seeing me survive... if she feels hope holding my hands... if she feels anything like love for me... then there is hope and reason to exist. If it is more than a ploy, more than a mere choice... then there may be hope.

"I am here, husband." Xam's voice was firm, but there was something there, vulnerability. Mian looked at her again, saw it. Saw the need.

"Of course you are," he said, and he wasn't really sure that he'd said it aloud, but was sure that she heard it. "Because you're amazing."

Xam flushed, looking away, that vulnerable part not wanting to be teased, not wanting to believe, but Mian's fingers found their way out of her hands, up her arms, around her shoulders, and he pulled her close, more aware than he had ever been that people never only had a single feeling in their hearts at a time. Because he endured five, ten, a hundred hearts imposed on him by the Hundred Heart Tonic, but his own heart was also a mess of feelings. Of hope, and love, and joy, and shame, and lust, and pride, and so many other things, all tangled together.

And somehow, something bent inside of him, and the Tonic and its hundred hearts swirled inside of him, the qi that it had absorbed flushing through his system in a rush that was almost too much for him to bear, even given the emotional burden that he was already undertaking, even with the purified aether from Ki'el. Or perhaps... at this stage, that was harming rather than helping.

But... it was only almost too much. Mian felt the qi surge through his body, crushing his insides and making his body feel bloated. And... although he had no idea what his path would be, he was sure that he had a lot more options than he had before, if he'd even had the potential to rise at all.

When at last the trance from the tonic was dispelled, Mian was surprised to find that he was holding Xam's hands, the two of them facing each other, with her eyes closed. "Oh," he said, though he should have known. "You came inside, too?"

"Foolish of me, I know," Xam said, but there was a playful lilt to her voice. "But if Sister Ki'el has to endure my husband's drugged qi, I can endure it as well."

Mian turned his head to see Ki'el sitting behind him, but the girl didn't seem the worse to wear for it. "You got through it okay, though, right?"

Ki'el gave him a look. "I experienced some strange things," she admitted, "but I was worried about you, and didn't take any time to explore them."

Mian had a pang of regret, a feeling like he might have once felt as flippant about going through danger as Ki'el seemed to--long ago, now. But he didn't dwell on it. "Thank you, Ki'el." He turned back to Xam, and smiled, seeing the undercurrents in her that suggested she felt the same as she had inside. "And thank you, dear Xam."

"Is it 'dear' now," teased Xam, but she squeezed his fingers before letting go and standing up. "It felt like you tempered yourself quite well. I get the impression that a tonic of that quality isn't meant for someone of your level."

Was it not? Mian considered that for a long moment, but stood up as well. "You might be right. Let's hope it's not the last time we do things beyond our level."

"I think you meant to say that differently," Xam said, but she seemed relieved. "But I think we'll continue to improve more rapidly than most, yes."

"You're both talking much more than usual," Ki'el noted from behind them.

"I'm in a good mood," Xam admitted, a little shyly. "Aren't you, dear?"

"Definitely," Mian agreed, though his mood sank a little when he turned to look for the last of their company.

"I am still worried about Chian," Ki'el said, but even as she did, the black barrier around Chian's space dimmed and then vanished, leaving only the girl sitting in the center of the space placidly, her own spirit also seeming to have been pressured by whatever she had gone through. "Perhaps... without need?"

Mian watched the girl reunite with her friend, and felt Xam attach herself to his arm, turning and giving her a look. "How was yours?"

The expression on Xam's face remained bright even as she answered, "Awful," but it sank soon after. "That flower, and its method, were also definitely intended for people above Gold. But it's interesting. That woman said water and movement... but if she hadn't added the movement part, I'm not sure I would have gained that insight from it at all. As it is, it'll take a lot of effort to turn it into a movement technique."

Mian nodded, and looked back at Ki'el and Chian. "No insight into paths for me. But... I feel like learning something will be easier. Maybe I just need to pick something."

"Something that works well with mine, perhaps?"

Mian looked at her, thinking she was teasing, but just nodded. "Probably wise, and definitely more fun than us trying to forge separate paths for the rest of our lives."

"Imagine being able to feel like we're actually married." Xam let out a sigh. "That girl is precocious, but I am certain that she has no idea when she's ruining a moment."

Mian laughed quietly at that. As far as he could tell, Ki'el still didn't even notice when he and Xam were together... or that they were irritated when she intruded. She was, after all, still just a child. "Even if we had walls and floors, I doubt the Lesser House has any kind of privacy. I know I've heard and ...sensed things."

Xam made a face. "We should have taken a vacation first. Surely the fate of the world won't depend on a few days or weeks."

But Mian could only think of the veritable whirlwind that had been Sobon blowing in and out of their lives, with a sigh. "You never know," he said, picking an old phrase, although he was never one for poetry. "A dragon can sleep for a century, then be a calamity for an hour."

"I know," Xam said, sounding sour, though she still clung to his arm. Now, Ki'el and Chian were walking towards them again. "It was the same in the military. I just can't help feeling like we should have time."

"If only things worked the way they should," Mian agreed, but shut his mouth as Ki'el nodded to them and turned to bow to the Elder, who still stood a ways away, watching them all idly. Mian followed suit, Xam matching his movement, and they all moved towards the exit. Louder, he asked, "How long were we in those trances?"

"Two or three hours," Ki'el answered. "Not the full four. We should have a few points remaining, in the end."

"We should probably find a place to settle ourselves and calm our spirits before we attempt the tribulation," Mian said, though it sounded like anyone would have made the same advice. They were all... somewhat tired.

"I..." Ki'el stopped suddenly, a moment before the rest of them felt it--a tremor, a ripple of qi from somewhere above. Not a qi wave that was a message, or the side effect of some technique.

A qi wave that felt like shock. Fury.

"It seems you're wrong about having time," Elder Sang--if Mian had heard Brother Du speaking his name correctly, before--appeared next to them. "That would be our dear Sister Ai discovering that matters have become complicated. Our advice is to take shelter in... a particular area."

But Brother Du dropped down from somewhere above, landing heavily, and glaring at the Elder. "This way," he said, making a large glowing palm appear for all of them to stand on. "The place you will be safest from Sister Ai's wrath is exactly the place you need to be next--The Sealed Palace, where the Sect performs its tribulations."

"Hmph," Elder Sang said, half turning away. "You never did have a sense of drama, Brother Du."

But Ki'el and Chian were already aboard, and Mian and Xam were but steps behind. As the qi of the entire sect seemed to shiver, Mian wondered just what kind of madness had been dropped in their lap--and who must have set this all up. Because although Mian dared not say anything out loud, he'd known from the very beginning.

Someone like Kem Jee Sai wasn't sent after someone like Ki'el without a reason, and with his master in seclusion, that meant someone else playing with everyone's fates. His hand reached out and squeezed Xam's firmly, and she returned the pressure, but he couldn't help staring upwards, wondering what puppetmaster was toying with an entire Sect.