The first time the thick walls of ice cracked and pus streamed in, they caught it almost immediately. Ice and stone congealed into the cracks while layers of bubble shields sprang forth in a multitude of colours. They were breached for perhaps a whole second altogether, only small amounts of caustic goo entering the space.
The second time, it was much worse.
“[Tal Sho, hold it!]” Ging’s voice was urgent, the severity of the situation cracking his stony exterior enough to let hints of panic through. His Conjuration was manifested, seven of the eight heads issuing forth streams of frost while the one remainder breathed out a thin black smoke. Lu wasn’t certain what the smoke was, but he trusted that his combat instructor knew what he was doing.
Tai Sho, in contrast, wore his terror openly with wide eyes and teeth bared – but his movements and spellwork were smooth, small globes of jelly flinging themselves from his hands to splat amongst problem areas, sealing them shut. Whatever spell he was using, it produced fluctuations even more complex than Ging’s Eight-Headed Hydra.
Jiang and Hu Kuon were back-to-back, pushing the intruding lake away with wind pressure alone, while Scarlet had a massive spool of silk rope out, the capture treasure being used as thread in an attempt to stitch their small sanctuary’s seams back together.
As for the others, they were presumably doing their own work to aid in the group’s survival – but unfortunately they were outside the range of Lu’s spiritual sense, and his eyes were focused entirely on his work. Mental effort and qi poured continuously into his casting of Instant Forge, the piles of scrap emptied from his spacial treasure transforming into misshapen plates that slot together into a passable imitation of a solid surface. It doesn’t need to be perfect; we can patch small holes later, just take care of the most urgent bits first.
His world had narrowed down to include only the spell, with whatever snippets of reality his sense caught hold of being an unwelcome consequence of needing to keep track of the structure of his mongrel ship’s hull. Exploded rifle barrels joined dented copper plates and partially assembled steam engines, the whole mess melting together into a nameless alloy just hot enough to be barely malleable. Some small part of his consciousness remembered to pour out more metal at regular intervals, while another actually fit the sections together with Dancing Blades, but the rest of him was lost in the act of pushing the disparate metals together as quickly as possible.
Instant Forge isn’t meant to be used like this. He swallowed his last qi replenishment pill, his dantian filling with the last energy it would have access to until he returned home. It’s meant to be used methodically – a crafting tool, for melting and shaping metals without a blacksmith’s forge. Going this fast, the qi cost is exponentially higher… closer to a third realm spell than a first.
But it was the only thing he could think of. His ice arts had turned to steam in an instant, and a wide-scale energy barrier was outside his abilities. Stop thinking about it. Just focus on the work, shape the plates, affix them where they need to be…
When Bo’s heavy hand fell on Lu’s shoulder, he almost fell under its weight. His qi was nearly entirely depleted, exhaustion turning the world into a headache-inducing smear. The man said something, but Lu’s brain refused to put it together.
“[Pardon?]” Under his hand, a plate looked as though it was boiling as trapped air pockets expelled themselves. Spatters hit Lu’s gauntlets, the less-than-molten metal glancing off without harming the armour.
“[It’s good, Lu. We’re okay – you can take a breather.]”
The words moved through Lu’s head like a bar of soap stuffed down a sink’s drain; imperceptibly slowly, then all at once as the obstruction dissolved sufficiently. “[We’re..?]” He looked around, his sense arcing through the air.
To his Comprehension, the sky pus stood out like signal flares – and there were definitely still leaks, the caustic substance only held back by its own viscous nature and a stream of new air issuing from a jar set in the centre of the bubble, increasing the pressure to the point the air wanted to leave more than the pus wanted to enter.
But it was safe enough, for the moment. The disciples were various shades of exhausted, ranging from Tai Sho’s ‘shaken but resolute’ to Hu Kuon’s ‘unconscious.’ The warriors actually seemed to be better, somehow; they were terribly injured, their flesh simply gone in places, but their eyes were bright and present. Bo patted him on the shoulder again, while Bone Softener and Dreamfever sat together on a patch of ground that had managed to turn back into mud at some point.
Bone Softener reached forward to rub something into the exposed bone of his right leg, but when he noticed Lu’s sickened gaze he merely waved, faintly smiling.
“[I- I suppose we are.]” His spell fell apart as he cut it off, the unfinished plate slipping from his fingers. “[Thank you, Bo.]”
The man smiled. “[You’re welcome.]” A brief silence passed, where Lu’s eyes were drawn to his friend’s wounds; lesions dotted his wide stomach, little white pockmarks that were actually only small in comparison to his frame – they were closer to finger-sized. Like someone had taken a spoon and tunneled out bits of him, the lack of blood lending the injuries a surreal quality.
His feet and ankles were wrapped up in leather strips, hiding them, but it was obvious that they had been stripped down to the bone; the pus had been knee-high at times.
Seeing Lu’s face, Bo’s smile dipped a fraction. “[So, uh,]” he said, “[You’ve got an escape thing, right? Cause the ‘boss is outta potions, and me an’ Softy have maybe one technique between us before our consumptions start eating themselves.]”
From across the room – not that it warranted an across, the thing was smaller than some of the elevators he had endured – Ging caught Lu’s eye. With a slight nod, any resistance in Lu’s mind that hadn’t been eroded by the glowing sea around them shrivelled up.
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…Sorry, Bull. I underestimated how wrong things could go.
“[Yeah, I have a thing. Give me a moment to catch my breath…]”
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Testing the splinters had not been physically strenuous, the way combat training often was. But it was also much less engaging; combat, while distasteful, was an expression of skill in a way manipulating the breaching treasure simply was not. Landing hits on one of his instructors was a puzzle; mangling his mental state until the bright yellow fleck of metal did what he wanted was mostly just tedious.
Moving himself from one splinter to another was easy. Moving with a passenger required an actual qi – or ki, they had tested that as well – expenditure, but it took no more mental effort on his part than moving his limbs. Multiple passengers scaled up exponentially, but he had managed a solid five before hitting a wall.
The more… interesting uses were more strenuous on the mind. Sending something away without going with it was a challenge, but he had gotten it down; the splinter simply required more detailed instructions, ones that very much cared for his mental state. The opposite, bringing something from a distant splinter to himself, was nearly impossible at first – and completely impossible if he didn’t know what he was bringing, couldn’t describe it accurately enough for the treasure to recognise. But he had also gotten a handle on that, although his track record was still spotty.
But by far, breaching the barrier into the liminal space was most difficult. Not in the same way that retrieving something was difficult; it wasn’t finicky with definitions. No, it simply required a supreme amount of mental effort, and thinking about directions in a very unintuitive fashion. In a way, entering the liminal space had prepared him slightly – recalling the way its space-without-space dimensions functioned got him on the right path.
He was also helped by having used the Birthstone Jadeite, the ‘pulled by a mental rope’ feeling priming him for the way the splinter wanted to be used.
But most of all, it was the work he did improving Space Ripper that helped him manipulate the thing. The technique was very versatile in the way it molded space; still folding it the way the spell it was based on could do, but with a much greater range of utility. It made him think of space in more than three dimensions – from inside a spacial pouch to outside wasn’t a path you could thread with a straight line, no matter how simple it looked to the eye.
And so after weeks of effort, he had succeeded at that as well. His first breach was no larger than a pinprick, and lasted only an instant. His tenth was big enough to fit a man, and he held it for thirty seconds.
Lu drew his eyes over the cramped room: seven sect brothers and sisters looked back, along with three warriors who outmassed the humans at least twice over despite their numbers disadvantage. This one will need to be much larger.
In hindsight, it was obvious that Spacial Freeze would have done a lot of work at stemming the tide. Though temporary, an impenetrable wall would have been invaluable, and taken a lot of the load off the shoulders of some of his companions.
But Lu was actually glad he hadn’t thought of it; he would need a lot of energy to breach though, and his dantian was running on vapours. “[Stand back, please. No, more.]”
Everyone scrunched together. No and Suu Li abandoned the floor to cling to the ceiling. The room listed like an uneven ship, trickles of watered-down pus sloshing around their collective ankles.
“[…Good enough, I suppose.]”
Lu raised his gauntlet, focusing on the splinter still slightly imbedded into his palm. The now-familiar overlay unfolded in his mind’s eye, a sea of monotone blue representing the extremely flat desert extending in every direction – except for two small areas that showed the terrain as dipping down towards black. One was due east, and the other centred on their position, only slightly obscured by the two overlapping stars denoting the two splinters he possessed. Interesting that it shows the one in the purse. I guess it doesn’t count that as a separate reality.
And ominous that the land had lowered above them. Is the sun just… burning away the ground? The more comforting alternative was that the desert had become liquid enough for the splinter to not count it, the way it showed deep water as further down. Let’s not think about it right now.
“[I’m forming the breach. Please don’t distract me, or come near.]”
“[Get on with it,]” Dreamfever mumbled, Jiang’s helmet digging into his ribs.
Right, right. Remember, it’s like reaching into a closed space… His thoughts bent into the correct shape, and the splinter’s projection twisted. It was still coloured blue, for whatever reason, but now it was a riot of different shades. Stars blinked into and out of existence, both in and out of his view.
Not quite far enough… If he could still feel any stars, it wasn’t enough; the liminal space did not have any. He would have greatly preferred to just go straight to the splinters held in the sect, but locating them was impossibly difficult with the reality barrier in the way – any of the stars could be one of theirs, and he wouldn’t know it. Come on, farther.
The map continued to shift between dimensional angles under the pressure of his mental effort, until suddenly it accelerated, started to shift all on its own without any input from his mind. There we go. Almost organic, the map flowed in ways that unsettled him. Patterns without patterns. No stars, no land. There it is.
That was the easy part. Now, he pressed. The map grew larger in his head, in ways he couldn’t describe. The splinter became hot inside his gauntlet, though not nearly enough to burn his third realm skin. “[Ah-h!]”
There was a sharp sensation, not pain, but close, and the splinter began to guzzle down ki. It streamed directly from his stomach without bothering with his channels, seemingly incorporeal, passing right through his spiritual veins without touching them. His stomach shrivelled and complained, but he continued to push. Needs to be big. Doesn’t need to hold for more than a few minutes, but for Bo it needs to be big.
And then… it was enough. He didn’t know exactly how he knew, it was simply instinct, but Lu could clearly tell that it would be enough to breach through.
He throttled his ki, and with one last twist of mental effort something like a soap bubble expanded from his raised palm.
“[…There,]” he panted.
“[Suu Li, you first.]” Ging’s tone was unbendable. “[Then myself and the Salt warriors. Then the rest of you by realm; lowest first, excepting Lu.]”
Suu Li’s mangled armour did little to hide her obvious distaste.
Please hurry, my fingers are getting numb. “[Sister, I can only hold it open so long.]”
She went through, seemingly sucked into the bubble the moment she touched it. Ging gave him a nod, then he was gone as well.
Bone Softener, Dreamfever, then Bo with a reluctant look on his face.
Scarlet, Hu Kuon, and Jiang all went without a word. Then Lady No, her expression relieved.
It was only him and Tai Sho, now. The core disciple gave the iridescent sphere a conflicted look, the dancing light playing across his face like it was caressing him.
“Please, senior. I’d like to leave this place.”
Tai Sho’s eyes turned to him, his conflicted look unchanged. “Do you?”
Lu’s lips thinned. “Please look around, Sir Tai Sho. We cannot stay here.” As much as I want to keep looking for Bull…
Tai Sho tapped his armour, and a long wooden stick appeared in his hand. It was like an ornately decorated walking stick, hair-thin lines burnt into the wood with a golden handle on one end.
“If I told you I had an escape treasure this entire time, what would you say?”