57. Gestalt

Taimei felt Lahri’s Qi enter her, just as she pressed her own Qi into Yara, and Yara pressed her Qi into Lahri.

This was a smaller application of the North Star Guiding Formation. The girls club. They had managed to form a collective once as a group of ten, and then spent two days recovering.

The formation had changed her in ways that she had trouble understanding. She was more aware of the others than ever before, but also aware of herself in a way that she hadn’t dreamed possible. On an existential level, she was more .

She had seen herself through the eyes of her friends, and her friends had seen themselves through her eyes. She had felt their pride. In themselves, in her, in the group, in each other.

She had felt their perceived shortcomings.

They had all agreed to test this power. They had channeled it through Hien Ro, who had formed a Rising Star and aimed it at one of the remaining mountains nearby.

It had blown off the snowcap and left a crater in its place.

But that wasn’t good enough.

Not for Little Bug, and because it wasn’t good enough for Little Bug, it wasn’t good enough for his disciples either.

For one thing, they wouldn’t always be together, and they wouldn’t have an infinite amount of time to synchronize their Qi. Now that they had done it as a single unit, they needed to be able to enter the formation in smaller groups. And faster. Without hesitation or pause.

And so they had broken up into boys and girls.

She felt the gestalt slip into place, and the other girls exchanged looks. Her eyes were glowing, as were the other girls.

“How shall we test it?” she asked them.

“Cut down that tree,” Yara suggested.

“Me?” Taimei asked, and the other girls nodded. So she turned towards their target mountain and she focused on performing the technique she had learned from Master Little Bug.

She had always known how to make light with her Qi. Her alignment had come naturally at a young age, shortly after she’d first awakened her powers as a cultivator. It had been an advantage in that she’d been able to draw energy from the light of day, from the sun and stars and moon. And in combat, when she blinded her opponents, it had proven invaluable.

But she hadn’t known about invisible light until Little Bug had informed her of its existence with a very informative demonstration.

And she hadn’t realized how deadly light could be if you concentrated it in just the right fashion. Technically simply showing her how to utilize that had fulfilled Little Bug’s promise to teach her a customized technique, but he had never once even hinted that he wanted her to return to her sect, and she wasn’t about to put such an idea in his head.

She turned the light up to the wavelength that Little Bug had shown her was most effective for cutting through things, and she pushed as much power into the technique as she could. She aimed it at a tree nearby and cut through it at its base.

And for three miles behind it, trees began to fall.

~~~~~

Hien Ro felt the gestalt form between him, Thaseus, Polkluk and Xol. He exhaled, at the same time feeling the relief from the others. They had managed it only moments after they had sensed the girls’ group do the same. They wouldn’t be the final group to manage to form a collective this time, but soon they knew little bug would shuffle the deck, until they had formed a collective with every possible combination.

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“My family would never approve of this technique,” Thaseus commented, looking at his hands from which sparks and shocks were jolting.

“Why not? It’s immensely powerful,” Hien Ro asked.

“Because it requires leaving myself vulnerable. Right now, should you turn your Qi against me, I would have no way to stop it,” Thaseus pointed out.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Hien Ro said. “I might have hated you when we fought in the tournament, but that was years ago now.”

“I know. But they would not understand that,” Thaseus said, sighing. “They believed that blood ties were the only ties that truly mattered, and even then they did not blink when I was beaten half to death by my older brother, who taught me to be strong by his example. Even then they did not – no. It is in the past.”

“So, the girls cut down some trees with their gestalt. What should we do?” Polkluk asked.

“Let me teach you how to do the Rising Star,” Hien Ro suggested.

And so they felt as he used their own Qi to form a proper rising star. The scar it left on the bedrock is still there.

~~~~~

Lukal Lukal blinked as the connection finally formed with Farun and Arjun. Arjun’s flavor of earth Qi was so different from his own. While Lukal Lukal’s earth tasted like mud and salt, Arjun’s tasted like loam and peat. Farun’s fire Qi tasted different from Thaseus and Hien Ro’s Qi as well, like smoked mesquite instead of ash or ceder.

Once they had formed the gestalt, they grinned at each other. Lukal Lukal felt like an outsider in this little circle as he felt the two men’s love for each other. And they felt it for themselves. They blinked as they exchanged looks, then blushed as they remembered that they were not alone in their own souls at the moment.

“We need to try this with Lahri,” Arjun commented.

“What if she doesn’t feel the same?” Farun asked.

“That’s why we need to try it with her,” he said.

“We should test the gestalt before we break the connection,” Farun said.

Arjun nodded, and they turned to Lukal Lukal.

“Raise a platform of earth as high as you can,” they instructed, speaking in the same voice. Lukal Lukal nodded and willed a pillar to form beneath them. It lifted them high into the air, forming a spire a hundred meters tall.

Which they then had to climb down, of course.

~~~~~~

I shifted the groups around, ensuring that every possible combination of my disciples had combined with each other at least once. It took them days.

Outside of my mountain, only hours passed.

I had placed the flags months ago.

It had been years on my mountain.

I was born twelve years ago.

I was fifteen years old.

Once I was confident that the disciples were ready, I told them that it was time for their final test.

I gathered them once more in at the summit of my mountain. They were all older than they had been when we set out from the ancient meeting stone. They had a look of determination when I told them that they were ready for my final test, and then I would teach them how to advance to the silver path.

They waited patiently for me to explain their task.

It was a very simple chore.

“Kill me, before I kill you,” I said, and I launched my attack at them with everything I had.

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