Chapter Sixteen - Cold Grotto

Nie Ruyi

https://i.imgur.com/xzisjky.png [https://i.imgur.com/xzisjky.png]

They broke the surface just as she began scratching at Liang Lanlan's hand to try and get some air. She gulped it down fast, panting and searching the area for any sign of where they were. All that greeted her were shadowed rocks. The light of Liang Lanlan's ball sparkled off of the minerals embedded in the walls and dripping stalagmites around them. The water they just exited near-glowed a beautiful aquamarine color, deeper than a Caribbean ocean but just as entrancing.

"Is this-" She had to stop, gulp down breath and start again, "Is this it?"

"Mn, yes, but what I want to show you is a little deeper in the caves. Come." Liang Lanlan put away the orb, which did nothing to dim the cave (and how did that work, Nie Ruyi wondered), and pulled herself from the water. Water sluiced off her robes, and when she stood, she was dry. Jealousy ran rampant through Nie Ruyi as she pulled herself from the water, gasping and huffing the whole time. She had scraped her arm in her graceless exit from the water, hissing in pain. Unlike Little Miss Cultivator, she was still dripping wet once she was on land.

The air was frigid and Nie Ruyi wrapped her arms around herself to ward off the cold, but goosebumps were running along her skin. She shuddered and hunched over. She couldn't walk any further, not in this cold.

"H-Hey, d-does me f-f-freezing to d-death have any af-f-fect on how th-this works?" She managed to ask, sarcasm thick in her voice. "B-Because I was-s-s hoping th-that you h-ha-have a c-coat in th-that qiank-k-kun p-pouch."

A click came from Liang Lanlan's general direction, meaning she clicked her tongue in annoyance, and Nie Ruyi had a brief flash of homicidal rage. Then, the sect heir pulled a thick robe from the same pouch she'd pulled the glowing ball. She held it out for Nie Ruyi to take.

Nie Ruyi's fingers felt stiff as she reached out to take the robe, and the shaking of her limbs made it difficult to wrap the warm, thick cloth around herself. She shoved her aching limbs through the sleeves and cuddled it close to her skin. It wasn't perfect, and her feet were still freezing in their silk slippers, but it was better than dying of cold.

"Keep up. If you get lost, it's your own fault." Liang Lanlan warned, and it echoed through the spires in the cave, which were quite tall. She could barely see the stone of the ceiling sparkling like stars above as she followed Liang Lanlan through the forest of stalagmites. They passed several pathways and caves, took some paths and ignored others, and Nie Ruyi was quite lost by the time they came to what they were (apparently) looking for.

"Sit upon the stone." Liang Lanlan gestured to a long, flat stone that honestly looked like a sacrificial altar to Nie Ruyi.

"...There aren't any blood sacrifices involved here, are there?" She asked, nervously approaching the stone slab. A giant, glowing crystal hung suspended in the ceiling above the slab and turned her skin a beautiful blueish tinge when she went under it. Sitting beneath the crystal, she found herself scrambling to put the robe she'd been given between her and the frigid stone.

"No." Liang Lanlan scoffed. "This is the best place to cultivate in these caves. We're going to spend the next few days down here-"

"Days?!" Nie Ruyi yelped, completely confused, "I thought this was just an afternoon outing!"

"Your Sect Leader okayed this. You'll be fine." As if as an afterthought, Liang Lanlan reached into her qiankun pouch again, pulling out a small pouch and setting it on the rock next to Nie Ruyi. "This is full of food and water if you get hungry. Don't drink the cave water. I'm going to go hunting while you're cultivating."

She turned and walked out of the cave as fast as her legs would take her, leaving Nie Ruyi with the pouch in hand, and the sound of dripping, ebbing water filling the silence. Did... did she just get put in time out in a cave? She shivered, pulling the robe tighter around her as she glowered at the floor.

"Wait, why can't I drink the cave water?!" She mumbled to herself, glower darting distrustfully towards the waters they'd just come through. This was getting her nowhere, so she forced herself calm. She let her eyes close, but the shivers distracted her. She couldn't sink into herself, the way Song Fengling had told her to. She tried to clear her mind, to call to mind instead the little phrases he had given her to memorize. When that didn't work, she laid down on her side and sighed.

"This is stupid." She muttered, her voice just barely louder than the water. "I can't meditate... So what is the point of this!?" She smacked the hard stone, reveling in the sharp sting it left on her palm.

Another sharp slapping sound filled the air, however, and sent her sitting up so fast her head reeled. She wasn't the source of this one, and that alone was terrifying.

"Liang-Qianbei?" She called, hoping she had the right honorific. Hoping the other woman would answer, she slid off the slab and stood on the cold floor. When no answer came, and another slapping sound rang through the frigid air, she straightened up, muttered, "Nope." and began fast-walking out of the room as quickly as she could.

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But upon exiting the little cave, she was confronted with three different paths, none of which looked familiar. Fear bubbled in the back of her throat like stomach acid and she clawed at the fabric of her robe, holding it tighter to her, the pouch hanging by three fingers. She looked first down the right tunnel, then the left. Then, down the middle.

There was no difference. She saw no footsteps, no light brighter in one than the other, no moss growing in the hollows of one that might show her the way back.

"L-Liang-Qianbei!" She cried, louder now, and it echoed. "This isn't funny! Please come back!"

A low growl emanated from behind her, and Nie Ruyi choked on a yelp. She turned, slowly, to look over her shoulder. Standing in the cave she'd just been in, the empty cave she'd just been in, were two creatures each the size of a large wolfhound.

That was the only doglike thing about them, however. Their four legs were tipped with claws as long as her forearm, and the bodies were amorphous cylinders filled with spines like a porcupine. What must be the head was more just a rough shovel-shape surrounding a maw of rippling teeth, with too-many eyes above that. She didn't have time to count those eyes, as one of them pounced towards her, claws extended.

She was saved only by her natural instinct to drop back away from the swipe. Her shriek reverberated through the caves, and the creatures rippled like water, before solidifying with a snarl. She scrambled, clawing her way over the sharp rocks of the cave to get her feet under her and to run. She didn't care if she got more lost, she needed to get away from these monsters right now.

Her careening escape managed to get her into a hiding place as the monsters passed by. Not very smart, she supposed, as she covered her panicked breathing with a sleeve to muffle it. She swallowed hard, waiting until she heard nothing of the claws or the splat-sound, before she shifted, and tried to find a more secure hiding spot.

Part of her wanted to take the slippers off, to make her steps even more silent, but honestly, the stone was freezing, and she wasn't about to get frostbite from carelessness. She finally found a small room off the side, deep enough to be hard to see in, but not deep enough for there to be anything but her in it. She sat down, pulling open the qiankun pouch she'd been given and dumping everything out.

Water in little vials, as Liang Lanlan'd said, along with wrapped rice-biscuits and jerky. Not enough for a full day, if she ate to be full. She sighed, taking a sip of water, and a bite of the jerky. She'd have to ration. Who knew when (if, a panicked part of her brain taunted her with) Liang Lanlan would come back. Or when Lao Xiaojun would realize she was in trouble.

Would he realize? Would he come for her? Would he think she ran away, or would Liang Lanlan lie to him and tell him she'd joined her sect, or... She shook her head. Now was not the time to let those paranoid thoughts run through her head, now was not the time to panic and let anxiety coax her into freezing up.

There were a few other things in her pouch, a blanket, a book, and a small marble carved with strange symbols. When she picked up the marble, a light glowed into existence, coming from the pearl itself. She set it down and it stopped glowing. "...Ah, must be magic."

It was helpful, certainly, though. She held it in her lips, and let its light shine on the book. It seemed to be a treatise on absorbing local spiritual energy. Well, that was about as helpful as a warthog's backside, but it was better than nothing, and reading settled the panic sliding through her.

And so began a terrifying cycle. After a while of reading, the sound of claws on stone, or the unidentifiable splat of something hitting stone heralded the creature's return, and her desperate bid to hide or run from them, entirely. Once she had hidden enough, she dug out the food, took a bite, took a sip, read until it happened again, or her eyes began to hurt. She didn't dare sleep, although she dozed numerous times only to wake to the creature's claws on her skin.

Once (and only once), she attempted to fight back in her need to flee, to push the monsters away. One of their weights pinned her against the wall, scraping her along, and she shrieked as pain split her open. One of the quills on the back of the beast lodged through her upper arm fully. After a frantic escape and a quiet moment panting against the pain in a hidden corner of a cave, she realized, with a muffled and heartcracking sob, that she might die here.

Pushing away the panic, she knew better than to pull out the quill. Its thickness was two of her fingers beside each other and she was sure it was the only thing keeping her from bleeding to death from where it was lodged in her upper bicep. She endured the agony of moving the horrifically severed muscles to rip her borrowed robe. Two strips of cloth. One wrapped tight as she could get it above the wound. Another wrapped tight around just below it. Cutting off the circulation, so she wouldn't bleed to death. She used the strips to stabilize the quill as well.

The quill was as long as her leg, and she sobbed viciously into a wad of ripped up cloth as she sawed at it with the knife, cutting the excess down so it wouldn't catch on anything. When the quill only showed two or three inches on either side of her arm, she fought against dizziness and sleep. She knew it was shock, coming to take her away despite her best efforts. She drank, emptying an entire vial, and then ate a full length of jerky, because she had lost too much blood. She lamented her dominant arm, lamented the feeling she was losing in the fingers of that hand.

She did not know how long she ran for her life, but eventually, she began trying the things she read in the book, to feel the heaviness in the air around her, to compare it to the heaviness inside her, and to imagine drawing it into herself. It was easier than meditation, to pretend that this heavy energy was swirling through her veins and pushing all the sludge from her veins and pathways.

In between bouts of terror-filled running, panicked hiding, and silent snacking, she found that she was starting to be able to feel it. The places where the heaviness was thinner and thicker. She was starting to be able to tell when the monsters were coming because the heaviness around them was different from her own. Closer in kind to the heaviness of the caves, they were, and that told her they belonged here.

They belonged here, in the same way that she didn't.

https://i.imgur.com/xzisjky.png [https://i.imgur.com/xzisjky.png]