Book One, Chapter 13 - Don’t Threaten Me With a Good Time

And here we are again, back at it. First big change incoming! Most of what has been done so far has been editing and improvements, but either for chapter 14 or 15, I'm going to be putting in a brand new chapter, a rework original! Wish me luck, see you again soon.

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Long is the history of ritual and parade, and longer still the lessons in that history. People have danced, painted, sung and eaten since before they had words for the concepts, and they have especially done so in the face of fear. When nights are cold, when food is scarce, when people are afraid and there are beasts in the woods- we have celebrated, and beat back what would harm us, at least in spirit, for a little while each time. 

Many believe that it was through such primitive celebrations that cultivation began. Some historians say that laughing, singing and chanting in the face of danger, for the sake of ourselves and our community, stirred something within us, which helped us to move past Bestial cultivation into the proto-forms of what we now consider “Orthodox” cultivation. I am not certain I agree, but I see the logic in it. The innate desire people have to find meaning in the meaningless, to create meaning, is a frequent source of breakthroughs or the more esoteric power we call “enlightenment”, but which might be better understood as a form of madness. To extrapolate and claim that such madness is innate to social interaction as we understand it is an easy, intuitive leap. 

Every culture that has ever been has ritual. Even without the dangers and knowledge that originally brought them about, these rituals and their effects often remain, in spite of the changes brought about, such as the Empire’s conquest and realignment of histories. It is fascinating to see the individual insanities that so empower those who pursue transcendence reflected in such cultural practices.

-Personal notes of Grandmaster Errath, vocally recorded.

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The Cold Sun Festival of Paleblossom city is not nearly so prestigious as the full name might imply, but in a city as big as this, even the smallest celebration ends up rather ostentatious. The Cold Sun Festival is not a small celebration, and the city does all it can to go all out, in spite of it not being one of the celebrations sponsored by the Empire. The city, cold, quiet and delicate like its namesake, lights up like it’s in bloom, breaking through the soft white snow in a riot of blue, purple, red and gold.

All along the streets, streamers are planted and hung so as to wave in the winter air, flags waving and decorated with images of lotuses, paleblossom buds, orchids, and other flowers special to the city. Effigies to fluttering red robins and bright, colorfully-plumed rainbow herons that can sometimes be glimpsed in the depths of the frozen woods nearby litter the streets and are placed gently in turn. Small fairy lights, imbued with minute drops of Qi from the mortals of the city, float and flutter about, their paper shells sometimes shaped like birds, butterflies, or running beasts, sometimes as simple lanterns. Snow and slush both have been cleared from all of the paved roads which weave through the city, and in spite of the weather, the number of people and vehicles using them has kept them clean and warm. Stalls, markets and stores stand bright, merry lights fluttering within and fragrant smells wafting out in all directions as groups come and go, buying gifts of silk and jewelry, flavored ice-cones and toasty-warm mooncakes. Warm tea and bright sparklers are all hawked by smiling vendors, enjoying one of the busiest nights of the year. 

Even in a city designed around cold, winter isn’t a natural time of activity for humans, and so only now is the gentle quiet of a sleeping city banished behind the screams of happy children, the singing of drunken voices and the laughter and chatter of moving crowds. The city feels alive, bright and colorful and loud, and the people’s mood reflects the change. It’s a gorgeous display, and while it might pale in comparison to the greater resources of the Second Ring or the distant glimpses one might catch of the capital plateau, it’s somehow warmer for being something made by and for all.

Well. Mostly. 

Still, even Raika can’t help but admire the city. Her eyes, in spite of the damage and blurriness, are still able to take in the sights and enjoy the beauty of the vivified city. Though shapes remain fuzzy, color, brightness and motion rule the day, and for once, her begging bowl is nearly full, coppers nearly reaching the brim. Between that and the practice she gets tuning out the crowds to the tune of Dink and the pumping of her own blood, the whole experience is more than worth it.

It still took a few more days of JiaJia’s pestering to convince her. She’s pretending that his smile when she caved and told him that yes, fine, she’d go to the festival, isn’t strong motivation to follow through on her promise. It’s nice in a way she hasn’t really had in a while, and hasn’t allowed in even longer. Not the heady thrill of victory, the vicious joy of competition or conquest, not the close companionship she misses, not the glory of the peaks- it is a simpler and stranger joy. She is simply here, in this moment, breathing cool air, looking at beautiful things as people are happy around her. It’s… nice. Nicer than she would have known to look for, if she were in a different position. 

No meditation. No violence. No moving towards something. Just… a moment.

Maybe she can find more moments like this someday. It’s hard to articulate, but some part of her can’t help but think what a pity it would be to miss things like this for the sake of moving faster. She rests, listening to children laugh, the sounds of singing and cooking, and feels what a pity it would be to go forgetting it.

It is in this moment, filled with a sort of peace she hasn’t known in… maybe a very, very long time, that she takes in a breath. Deeper than she knew she could take, because for once, there’s no pain to it, no twang of ruined flesh- just a calm in the act of itself. With a startled sort of jerk, she feels a rib creak and pop into a new position, the tension leaving a pulled muscle she hadn’t known was there as the bone stops pinning it in place. The sensation is like a cork slipping out of something, even if… even if she’s not sure it’s where that rib is originally supposed to go. 

Doesn’t matter much. She can feel a slightly wider range of motion, and a bit less pain, and a bit more breathing space. She taps her sternum again, channeling the memory of the vibration of the rib’s settling, and adds her heartbeat to it. She focuses on the thrumming of it, the way that the impact and shift rippled through her whole body, and breathes in deep, keeping that sensation in her mind. 

And then she lets the feeling go, turning back to the festival.

She’s getting better. Stronger, at least. Rather than wasting away, she’s managed to move herself towards evolution of some kind. 

As the teachers of the Hungering Roots sect once told her, death is the fate of all beneath the Heavens. To cultivate, then, is to survive in spite of it, and to overcome that demented Will.

The thought of them seeing her now, quoting cultivator wisdom as a broken cripple, brings a chuckle to her lips. 

Doesn’t really matter anyways. In this moment, in this beat of time, life is simply… good. 

Eventually, stretched and tingling from swirling something in her body, she opens her eyes and exhales. Her breath smells of rust and old blood, a factor she’s chalking up to how she can sometimes “smell” things she couldn’t before rather than something she ate. Whatever it is, probably better out than in. Maybe that’ll be her next project; replace what she’s got with new, better things.

Then she blinks, surprised, her smile returning in fuller force as she catches sight of Li Shu in the crowd.

Raika’s at the edge of the courtyard, against a little overhang wrapped in a few different candles and a colorful banner decorating the walls above it, while Li Shu stands closer to the center, eyes wide like a little kid as she stares in wonder and laughs at something only she can hear. She’s blurry, but the specific colors of a healer’s robes are designed to stand out, and she’s easy to recognize. The younger woman almost skips as she moves, and while the weight of her Qi lets people know she’s coming and allows them to move out of the way, she never swings it or pressures anyone, happily avoiding people mired in conversation or pausing before crossing the paths of those running by. This might be a different sort of vision of good, but Raika can’t help but smile at the sight of her. She raises her arm in a soft wave towards the healer when she thinks she might see it.

Even through the distance between them, Li Shu notices the wave. Pretty colors and movement is nice, but there’s something to be said for the senses of a cultivator, able to detect intent and the presence of a stranger across a crowded plaza. Raika notices when she stops using her Qi quite as delicately, noticing how the crowd parts a bit quicker before her and how some looks go her way as people realize who she is.

“Raika?” she asks, voice soft, like she’s worried the illusion might burst if she’s too loud. “How are you here? Oh my lords, did you find someplace to stay, I’m so glad!”

“Only if you consider alleys and alcoves a place, honored healer,” Raika rasps with a smile. “I’m afraid I’m just a bit too tough to kill for a winter as mild as this to take me.”

Li Shu laughs, her expression alight. “I’m so sorry it’s been so long,” she says, voice soft. “Master told me I was forbidden from seeing you until I stopped dangling hope and gave you results, and I am not enough of a healer for that yet.” She kneels down, bowing low to the cripple. “I am so sorry I don’t have better news, but I am deeply happy you’ve held on until now.”

…well. There’s something to be said for propriety in times of kindness and honor, like being bowed to by a healer of all things. 

Eh. Raika smacks the other, apparently even worse idiot in her life with Dink. Li Shu sits up, not nearly hurt by something so trivial but visibly surprised. 

Raika is holding back laughter, smile soft but the eyes behind it warm and a bit sad. “Idiot girl,” she rasps. “I never expected you to heal me, and your master damn well knew that. That path is closed to me, unless you magically gain skills to shake the heavens. It was just nice to see you, and you should thank your master for trying to keep you away from any pain from my death.”

Li Shu seems ready to refute it, ready to say something, but instead sighs, long and quiet. “Master wouldn’t be so cruel,” she says eventually, though there’s no life to it.

“Your master is startlingly kind,” Raika counters. “This world is cruel and full of destruction for no reason at all. Them hoping to avoid some of it splashing on you is more than most would do. I am glad I am not just a lesson learned, though. It’s good to see you well.”

“And you too!” Li Shu exclaims. “You look better than when you left, not worse! What have you been eating? Is the cold affecting your joints too poorly? How are you still alive?”

“Trash, yes, and like I said, too tough to die. The Cold Sun itself would have to come and pluck me from this place, and I’d make an awful mess of her scenery.”

Li Shu giggles, even though she definitely looks a bit dissatisfied with the answer. Raika simply takes the opportunity to Dink against her own forehead, and focuses on her heartbeat a moment to let the vibration and bloodflow stimulate that stinging sensation again. If there was any doubt that it’s doing something, it’s blown away by how wide Li Shu’s eyes get, how she audibly gasps, how she rocks back onto her heels away from Raika for a moment. 

The smell of mild, clean flowers and metal purified with heat hits Raika then, a wave of it that makes her nose wiggle until she sneezes. Li Shu’s qi? The smell would fit if it was, and the cleanliness and softness of it surprises Raika even with all she knows about the young healer. 

“What was- how did you-”

Before she can finish, a familiar purple and red sect outfit steps in from out of view.

“Excellent to see you once again, healer Li Shu,” interrupts the honorable, annoying, stupid piece of shit Qen Hou, all smiles. He looks like he’s dolled his fool self up, long hair in a much more ornate bun than Raika’s seen him use before, the rich brown of it highlighted by healthy tan skin like he’s spent the winter under the sun. “Are you alright? I saw you crouched here and-”

Then he sees Raika, and he goes dead silent.

“Qen Hou,” she says with a smile that is all teeth and scar. “What a delight to see you again. Truly an honor this lowly one did not expect.”

He says nothing, but his eyebrows raise, his eyes a bit wider. Raika almost laughs out loud at the look, holds it back, and then thinks better of it and gives a very hag-like cackle. Li Shu, catching on and catching sight of the look Qen Hou is giving, actually joins in, though she chokes off the giggle quickly and rises to greet her fellow cultivator properly.

“Honored Qen Hou,” she says. “It is good to see you once more, senior brother. I was not aware you would be attending the festival areas outside of the sect.”

Raika rolls her eyes at how obvious the man’s being, but her ears do catch on something. “Senior brother, is it? I wonder if honored healer Li Shu has gone up in the world recently?”

Li Shu turns back with an absolutely dazzling smile. “I have!” she squeals. “I’ve joined the Purple Flame Burning Lotus sect! Look!” She twirls a bit to grab onto the belt around her waist, something Raika’s damaged vision failed to pick up earlier. The dark purple adds a splash of color to the clean white and red of her healer’s robes. “They were impressed with my skill and asked master Rui Ka if I could apprentice with them for a two year period, to see if I have what it takes to become a proper cultivator!”

Under the scrutiny of the blaring bright enthusiasm Raika can’t flinch without being mean, but it takes a very nearly painful effort to keep it back. Without Qi, Raika has no idea how good a healer Li Shu really is, and she hasn’t exactly had a lot of chances to see her work. Still, it’s not an uncommon arrangement, though the fact it’s a two year contract indicates it really is a trial, and not that the sect is pursuing a divine talent. She can’t help but flick her eyes at Qen Hou and ever so slightly raise an eyebrow, amused at how quickly he looks away.

“That’s wonderful, Li Shu!” Raika says instead, bowing slightly at the waist from a seated position. “I’m honored to be in the presence of someone sought after by a sect.”

“Yes, the Purple Flame Burning Lotus sect only takes the best, as is their right as the great sect of the city,” Qen Hou agrees, conveniently and noticeably. This time she does roll her eyes a bit. “But tell me, Crippled Raika, how is it that you’ve weathered this winter so well?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know, pretty-boy.”

He frowns a bit.“Yes, I would. Your disrespect does you no service, here.”

“But it irritates you!” She cheerfully rasps. “And I haven’t been intimidated by stray pups since I was a child, so why should I be now, when I have become something far too tough for even the Heavens to chew?”

Li Shu’s eyes dart between them, but it seems to hold more confusion than anything. “Senior Brother Qen Hou, it’s incredible, isn’t it? Raika, would you-”

Raika Dinks against the street before she can finish the sentence, catching Li Shu’s eyes meaningfully. It’s hardly as damning as grabbing at her sleeve might be, but it’s still far more than enough for Qen Hou’s eyes to flicker back down to her, then between the two of them.

“I am honored to show my progress to a doctor of such skill,” Raika says, “but I’d hate to bother the young master here with such meager offerings. Better he wander off and find something more suited to his interests to entertain himself with. Perhaps he might visit some establishment for companionship tonight? I can hook you up, I know a guy.”

Who says she can’t be polite or subtle? A master at work, she is.

Qen Hou’s eyes sharpen, the bit of color in his cheeks dimming as he looks down at her. She’s sure he’s hurt people far more important for far less impressive insults, after all; he’s a cultivator, it’s like half of what they do. Hell, back when she had power, she would have already struck some asshole beggar for insulting her at all.  Li Shu pales too, actually, making her think she might have taken things just a step too far-

And before things can escalate, a yell comes up from the crowd behind them. Cheers rising to the heavens, people crowing and yelping and howling in celebration as the Cold Sun rises in the north.

There are usually two moons in the sky. Lua, the grandest of them, pale and tinged slightly blue,  and Rue, the younger sibling, orbiting her elder with a brilliant red glow. On occasion, the bright green star of Jasmira, to the south of Lua, will flicker into being, forming a third and even smaller orbiting body of jade and Imperial gold- but such events are rare, marked by decades rather than months. 

But, once a year, Lua meets her cousin. 

There are five beings in the sky. Jasmira, the final star; Lua, the eldest moon; Rue, the crimson sister; the Sun, writhing home of Wyrms; and the last and furthest of them all. The Cold Sun.

It is an imperfect perfect thing. As the dark of the night deepens, it shines bright enough to be seen, floating there, beyond any and all other things in the sky save the blinking stars. It appears more as an uneven puzzle than a sphere, made up of a thousand-thousand disparate, sharply-defined shapes forcibly shoved and compressed against each other. Pointed, angular tips of pyramids jut out at odd angles beside impossibly precise lines and valleys, curves and sinuous geometries awkwardly crushed into place next to fractals and cubes visible even from the ground. It looks like the toy blocks of some divine child were taken and haphazardly thrust into a single point, and even looking at it makes Raika feel cold. 

Not cold like winter. Not cold like a wind from an unexpected direction, not cold like ice, not cold like blood loss. Looking at it, she imagines she can understand what the end of the frozen north, where this thing surely comes from, must be like; it is a cold of Endings. It is cold like the moment where you can’t go on anymore, and lay down to rest. It is cold like the mornings where she could not get up, and simply lay still and shivered until sleep took her again. It is cold like the moment where a dying thing’s eyes stop being eyes and become jelly that will soon rot. It is cold like the moment where you would rather die than exist, and then like the cold of the moment after, forever and ever.

It’s disgusting. It’s a horror. It’s haunting. It’s beautiful. It looks like the end of the world, come bereft of face and bereft of hate and bereft of everything, an absence of things, a void in the form of structure, and she is so, so, so small.

They’re cheering.

She’s felt this before, of course. .It’s always there if you look for it, out in the night sky, but once a year it gets brighter, becomes more “visible” in some undefined way. She’s felt its presence before. The cold of it, juxtaposed against the brightness of life, the celebration made all the louder and more lively by the comparison.

She’s seen the Cold Sun before. She’s seen this. She’s traveled, she’s glimpsed it at least once a year for as long as she’s lived, it’s never been like this, what is this, what is-

There is the most miniscule shift. The Cold Sun seems to tremble. Perfect angles and lines and planes trembling like gossamer thin sheets, like wafers, like ice, like the massive, impossible thing in the sky might somehow be delicate. It trembles, or maybe her eyes do, maybe it’s her that’s trembling in the face of cold beyond even the definition of temperature or warmth or Change, but no because there. In the trembling, there is a shifting.

A single finger. 

She shouldn’t be able to see it. In the core of her, in the center of all she is, she somehow knows beyond doubt that the finger is maybe twice as big as one of hers, distinctly inhuman but certainly not larger than a celestial body. No cultivator below immortality should be able to see that far, never mind her own damaged eyesight. But she can see it. In a world of strange blurs and indistinct details, that orb of perfect forms and that one finger are defined more clearly than anything she’s ever seen.

The orb, the sphere, the three-dimensional collection of mathematically perfect angles, is pushed ever so slightly to the side, like the cover to a container, by a single finger. And behind it, there is something looking through.

Raika understands, for a single infinite moment, what it means to be so cold that freezing does not make ice but marble, shaped in the language of perfection. She understands what it means to see something so cold that she has never been born and will never exist, because there is nothing save the absence of everything.

Nothing but that eye, and the conscious, empty awareness inside of it.

And then, there is light.

The night ripples. The entire night sky, like it’s a blanket or a sea of perfect black water, moves in unison, and her mind does not have room or understanding or sight to understand what occurs between that moment of perfect, infinite cold and the next. All she knows is that one moment that finger has pushed aside something as large as the sun in the sky or the moons in their sister-orbit, and in the next the world shifted, and the light of the stars is pulled from them. They don’t look right. They look like holes. How did she never notice that the stars are holes? That their light is not of the sky but of a place that is beyond it and hurts to think about, hurts to see, hurts to-

The night sky is moving like water. The atmosphere itself holds tight to space and light dances with it, pulled from the stars and the moons and even dim festival lights below, until long trails of glowing light like blood or tears drip down onto the world. Brilliant jade from Jasmira, the maybe-star, weaves throughout it, like a needle pulling together a greater work. The world bleeds color, a sea of Gold and Purple and Red and Green and Blue and Orange and Black, and as the sky ripples they make trails that dance in long streamers and flags across that infinite expanse.

And she is here. She is ok. She is alive, and her heart beats, and that one, single moment where she realized it had not been beating sends a ripple through every inch of her, every cell in unison screaming and then breathing with that one heartbeat and the next.

And the orb of perfection, of true and mightiest impossibility, swaddled now by streamers of world-blood, sinks back beneath the horizon, and is only an orb, and not an impossible hole to that thing.

Brought back from that moment of absolute silence, that place where there was nothing, every sense feels like she’s just emerged from underwater. She’s hit by a world of stimuli all at once, overwhelmingly loud due to its lack mere seconds ago.

Qen Hou is standing in front of her, looking up. He’s the tallest thing around, an immediate concern, something real she can grasp at, and- and in the time that she realizes he’s only been looking up for a moment, the maybe thirty seconds between the rising of the Cold Sun and the dancing lights from the stars, she smells him.

His scent hits her first, and she holds to it like an anchor, but the others are still there, screaming for attention.

She can smell everything. She can smell all of them, each one their own unique scent. Li Shu’s flowers and heated, delicate metal, the burnt ozone and lightning and clean-burning flame and magnesium of Qen Hou, the smell of broken stones and running water from a mother and her husband, the smell of sharp firecrackers and clean summer nights from their child, a hundred other smells all around-

But not from her. Not from the cripple who saw the moon, the cripple who is hyperventilating and crying and whose tears are crimson when everyone else is yelling joyously and celebrating and so very normal.

Qen Hou and Li Shu turn to her at almost the same time, the latter wide eyed and laughing so sweetly, the former still furious but clearly mollified, but they both start at the sight of her. Li Shu immediately kneels, asking what’s wrong, her voice coming from a million miles away, while Qen Hou looks around in confusion, trying to find a source of what caused this.

It’s only because he’s looking around that he reacts to something, moving in front of her and Li Shu both, before an impact blasts through the wall above and behind her and sends her tumbling among bricks and the warm, soft smell of flower petals and suture needles.