As the storm clouds wheeled, high above them, revolving and swirling and cascading, and racing in their terrible power ever southwards— Mingtian stood at the edge of it all insulated only by a thin pane of glass, the golden glow spilling out around him catching, sparkling, as the snow fell down.
What a dark mont.
Far above, the wind howled, and the qi of the world shivered, and—
All cold ca down to their desolate world.
………
The next morning, the whole city woke bright and early. And bright was definitely the right way to describe it— the entire city had been drenched in what was probably the most snow it’d had in years. Certainly more than it’d ever had last winter, and by no small margin, either. Most people were well willing to stay inside and huddle up amongst the warmth, confident that they wouldn’t be able to get to work in the first place, anyways…
Mingtian, of course, had no such reservations. He couldn’t actually get out of the house via his front door, sure; the nearly three feet of snow made that prohibitive— but luckily, the door wasn’t his only exit.
Leaping from his window was pretty fun, ultimately. That mont of weightlessness, suspended above the pristine snow… and then gravity reasserted its claim over his mortal self, dragging him unceremoniously to the ground with a poof of glittering snow and a suspiciously Mingtian-shaped hole in the ground.
He lay there for a second, feeling but not really feeling the kiss of the cold on his skin— before, after a second, he picked himself up off the ground and began to trudge towards the park. He considered, for a mont, making a formation or talisman or sothing of the sort that would lt the snow in front of him… maybe sothing utilizing one of those phoenix feathers? No, that was probably a bad idea…
In the end, he just forged his way through the pillowy white with only his mortal strength. Which was, granted, not entirely insignificant— he hadn’t left himself weak when sealing himself, after all— but it was still sowhat of a slog to make his way all the way to the park.
A few other people had co out, too. Not a whole lot— the weather was rather quite frightful, after all— but enough that the park had that faint air of vibrant, lively atmosphere. The sa kids from the day prior had been joined by a whole group of their friends, no doubt similarly freed from whatever responsibilities they might have had by the coming of the snows… he watched, faintly amused, as they clambered onto the old snow fort they’d built before and began to expand it. With all the snow the had access to, he didn’t doubt they’d have a quite unassailable position by the end of the day…
He glanced behind him to the sound of soone gliding forward— quietly, despite the deep snows.“Clever.”
“Thanks!” Lily stepped across the last of the snow— walking on it, the faint gleam of a formation of so sort just barely evident beneath the soles of her feet. “It’s pretty hacky, I’ll be the first to admit, but it’s fun to walk across the snow so easily.”
“I can’t imagine that you had the most dignified of exits.”
Lily flushed. “We don’t talk about the friction coefficients.” Mingtian just chuckled.
A few seconds later, bounding from the sa direction— this ti with far more ado— ca Avyr. The usual ungainly gait of a human wading through deep snow was utterly lacking from him— instead, he leapt through the snow, sailing from spot to spot instead of deigning to deal with the snow that almost entirely covered him.
It reminded him of a fish, or so elegant cetacean, breaching the ocean surface— and spray, cascading down off his back in so much glittering cloud-of-snow, scattered into the frigid air. With his cultivation enhanced strength— second-step strength— he could quite easily leap more than twice his body length every ti. Sohow, he made it look graceful.
That rather more dramatic entry managed to do what Lily’s had not— gather the attention of the group of kids and their snow fort. The sole adult amongst their number tried to calm them down— but, notably— didn’t actually reprimand any of them as they struggled through chest high-snow to get to their bench…
Ah. Mingtain blinked, quietly reprimanding himself for not realizing sooner, and quietly, amusedly, leaning back as the first of them arrived.
Aimi tumbled out of a snowbank, giggling madly as she collapsed onto the ground next to Avyr, gasping for breath in the lee of her exertion. “That was fun! C’mon, c’mon, he’s not going to bite or anything…”
Mingtian sent an amused gaze to Janus as he trailed behind the pack of rambunctious kids, looking rather exasperated. “Sorry for… their eagerness… sotis,” he paused, catching his breath for a mont— “sotis I think I have enough energy to keep up with them, and then they pull sothing like this, and I rember…”
“It’s no matter.” He patted the bench beside him, not looking away from the gaggle of kids once as they managed to, in the impressive way that only arrogant kids and cultivators with an equally low level of emotional intelligence could, challenge the two to a snowball fight. “I wouldn’t have thought you, of all people, would be this calm.” As they raced out, the kids eagerly retreating to their fortress while Lily set up sothing that they’d probably rember for the rest of their lives, and Avyr played up the part of the ‘fearso beast’ for them to fight against.
Janus shrugged, and if it was a little awkward, then Mingtian had the presence of mind enough not to point it out. “He’s… harmless.” His fellow librarian heaved a bag— a heavy, insulated bag— onto the bench beside him, hard enough to make the whole structure creak. “Not that he doesn’t have the capacity to do harm— he’s an Opening cultivator, for heaven’s sake— but that he doesn’t have the will.” Even as he roared at the kids, and the kids squealed and threw a flurry of snowballs back… “it simply isn’t in his nature.”
“What is nature, and what is choice?” Janus just gave him a weird look, and he chuckled in return. “Sorry. I had a conversation with Avyr the other day about matters of cultivation, and such. I’m just… in a state of mind.”
“Aren’t we all?”
“And now you’re the one asking philosophical questions?” For a long second, neither of them spoke— before, together, they burst out into laughter. Whether it was the strangeness of the circumstance, or the influence of his mortal existence… Mingtian found the laughter to be surprisingly real.
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Out in the field, Lily shouted— “seal!”And a circle of blinding light erupted beneath her, a gleaming, furious light that seed to glow with all the sunlight of a snow-clad world. Then, a wind whipped up, small at first, then only ever stronger, expanding in scope until the whole park shivered under the force of it and a maelstrom of swirling snow revolved around the site of her grand formation.
Most of that was due to inefficiency in the qi gathering nodes, he gathered, though it certainly looked dramatic. He made a note to give her so pointers on that part of the art when they next spoke to one another… but, inefficiencies in a formation were inevitable when they were so quickly constructed.
Flashes of red light crackled through the contained storm as it reached only higher— another inefficiency, this ti relating to her qi control which… understandable, given her low advancent. Still, she had clearly been rushing with the formation if she’d let it take this much of her ager qi reserves…
With a final, sonorous boom of displaced air, the cyclone burst— bulging out and then blasting back with a clap of air, leaving only a fine misting of snowflakes suspended midair… and Lily’s brand new fortress of supre power.
It was… surprisingly unimpressive for such a dramatic formation. Mingtian couldn’t hold down the snort of laughter that escaped him at the sight of a hollow cylinder of snow, ten feet tall and featureless and just… deposited onto the middle of the parkgrounds. It didn’t even have any crenulations or anything, just a smooth top.
Everyone else, though, was too busy gaping in awed, stunned surprise to realize that the whole thing wasn’t that great to begin with.
He could see the faint exhaustion that burdened Lily after that working, weighing down her shoulders and clinging to the shallow rise and fall of her chest… but, she didn’t let it burden her too much. Instead, she rely stood atop the wall, fierce wind catching the open ends of her jacket and— frad so dramatically, placed her hand on the poml of her sword and declared— “I have raised the castle of Infinite Hyperdoom! Tremble in fear, enemies of the Hyperdoom Sect!”
His laugh only redoubled.
Of course, the kids didn’t take that lying down. In the spirit of good sporting, the first elder of the Infinite Hyperdoom Sect— that was, of course, Avyr— was convinced to betray his evil sectmaster by the righteous hero Aimi, who then rode him into battle at the head of an entire division of snowball wielding junior disciples whose glorious charge was too much for Lily to handle. Sohow, all the snowballs managed to bypass shielding talismans capable of blocking qi-enchanced blows from cultivators, but— well, that was the power of righteousness or sothing. They were having fun, and that was the most important part of it.
The whole thing ended when, after most of the kids had been struck by one of the sectmaster’s cultivator-precise snowballs, Avyr had burst with a blazing, golden power, shooting towards and through the tower in an enormous spray of shattering snow. Lily cartwheeled comically at the top of her tower for a short second before she crashed backwards with the avalanche-destruction of the castle of Infinite Hyperdoom.
The kids cheered, Avyr let out a triumphant roar, and Lily just groaned as she pulled herself free of the wreckage. She was smiling too, though.
“Alright everyone!” Mingtian started a bit as Janus called out from beside him, gathering everyone’s attention— “who wants hot chocolate?” A chorus of kids crying ‘!’ Responded in kind, the whole gaggle of them, even the most tired ones, racing over to crowd around them. With the collapse of the castle of Infinite Hyperdoom, it seed that their hero had graciously allowed the defeated sectmaster to partake in their victory spoils, too.
Janus spared a glance to Avyr, slightly apologetic. “Sorry… if I’d known you’d be here, I would have packed sothing for you…”
“It’s fine,” the big cat rumbled, seemingly unbothered.
Mingtian, on the other hand, had an idea. Grabbing the thermos of cold milk his fellow librarian was using to cool down the hot chocolate, he poured a bit into a cup and sketched a quick heating formation onto it. A rather elegant thing, if he had to say, ensuring that the cup didn’t heat up as much as the milk within it…
He handed it over to Avyr, who tentatively used his two front paws to prevent it from spilling everywhere. The look he gave him, steam curling up from the cup and twisting around his whiskers, and fleeing to those lofty skies above…
“Thank you,” he murmured quietly, before leaning down to lap at the warm drink.
It was almost even cute.
The mont’s prior energy slowly collapsed back, fading once more, into the more usual, the more quiescent quiet enjoynt shared around a cup of any good drink. The kids all loved the hot chocolate, strange drink though it was, and he had to admit it was a rather tasty concoction…
As the steam curled up into the air, drifting across the starless azure sky, he took it all in—
Just another mont so mundane, and yet, despite it, he couldn’t help but feel like it was so much better than it’d been when he was…
Alone.
What a peculiar, mortal sensation. To so truly feel the distinction of the passing days and months, in a world that moved on the whim of hours and gave no respect to the future eons.
Avyr gently placed the cup on the bench, keeping a careful eye on it— lest so rambunctious kid knock it over. “This was… nice.” He seed to hesitate, on the next words— not an ill-fated hesitation, he didn’t think, rely a hint of awkwardness. “Fun as it was, we didn’t co out here to get in a snowball fight. We…”
Lily took a long gulp of her hot chocolate and, with a gasp, quickly spoke over the big cat. “What he ans to say is that we’re going to go on a short vacation. I an— I know that this is a vacation already and we’re having fun, don’t get wrong! Just, we thought about it and didn’t want to use our whole break just staying here in the 32nd precinct when there’s so much more interesting stuff to explore, you know?”
“I understand.” He nodded his head… that they had co back, at all, was already counter to the typical way of things. To explore, to grow… it was not all of cultivation, but he would be a fool to say it was not at least part. Though, he could not deny that he was at least curious. “Where do you plan on going? Back to the Dragonspine Mountains?”
Lily choked on nothing, and Avyr laughed. “No,” he rumbled, emphatically. “Not back there. Not for a long ti, hopefully.”
“Yeah, what he said.” Lily shook her head, giggling— eyes aglimr with mirth. “We’re just going to head to the next precinct over, you know? It’s not going to be anything crazy, just visiting the museum there. I’ve heard they have a bunch of artefacts from the Empire of Twelve Constellations!” As if their entire city wasn’t an artifact from that ancient empire…
Mingtian sighed, his breath billowing out into the freezing cold. It wasn’t a displeased sigh, though. “Sounds interesting. Be careful.”
“Of course, of course.” Lily rolled her eyes. “It’s just a quick trip. What could go wrong?”
Probably not much.
Probably.
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