It was almost ti for her second attempt. This ti… she felt just as confident as she had the first ti she’d used the formation, but for that nagging voice—= that reminder that for however much she’d been confident, she’d also failed. Perhaps this ti too…
No. She understood the process. Or at least, she understood the process enough to know that what she was attempting was probably correct. To build a technique from so little— to build a ridian Opening scripture from so little… she’d not appreciated the challenge entirely when she’d first started, but now that she’d co this far, she knew just how difficult it truly was. No wonder most people waited until they were further along in their cultivation before even attempting the sa— were they not using the sort of formation she was, were it not for the knowledge that she’d learned from Mingtian… it would have been prohibitively difficult.
It already was prohibitively difficult. No, without those select advantages she knew that it would’ve been impossible. It was an unpleasant thought…
Springti had stolen over East Saffron, at last. Not in the fullness of its verdant majesty, in the changing of the season— but even still, it had brought with it an incredible flush of new life that grasped in its hands, in its beneficent benediction, the whole of the city. The snows had thinned to only the faintest of dustings, and the growth… pushing up at last through the softening soil, rushing forth from denuded branches, bursting from bamboo and crowning the whole world in their nascence. The whole city seed to be aglow, in that tension unfurled, released with the ending of winter—
That they might, at last, be free of the specter of the battle in the heavens. That they might at last move forth into the world, confident now that the work of their hands was not about to be overturned by the attack of so fell cultivator.
Taking advantage of the recent spell of good weather, she’d set up outside to finish the last of her work. A pleasant breeze brushed past her, toussing her hair and catching on her robes, and fluttering— rich with all the new-growth scents and the river’s passing, and the faint remnant of the city’s harsh sll. Reduced, as it were, to a re backdrop— a nostalgic echo, rather than the cloying thing that it was in the 32nd Precinct. Even that was different…
She didn’t mind it, not really. It wasn’t like she could truly let herself get too mad about the elimination of sothing she’d found so unpleasant in the first place.
Avyr rested on the other side of the table she’d dragged out, absentmindedly scribbling down the rest of… so howork or another, it wasn’t one that Lily recognized at a glance. She wondered what he felt about the whole thing— if whatever emotion it was could even be grasped by one such as her. It didn’t really matter, she supposed. As long as he was enjoying himself. Or, well, enjoying himself to a certain extent of the word…
She turned back to her own project. Not even a week prior there had still been so much work to be done that she’d despaired at the thought of having it all ready in ti, but now? Everything had co together at last. Each branch of the formation, of the mantras written in the margins, of the arrays and various musings and all her different thoughts on the matter… it was all at last complete.
Beneath the sun rising, bright and harsh and radiant in the sky overhead— all she had to do was do it. Yet, still… she found herself hesitating at the final door, not quite willing. Not perfectly willing, and if her theory was correct, one had to be perfectly willing. It was not just a physical ability, after all, but a taphysical one; to expect failure, she knew, was to fail. Yet she also knew so intimately well that to accept success did not an that she’d succeed, either.
That’d gone so well last ti…
She sighed. “Avyr…” not quite knowing, even, why she dragged the cat into it— his advice was good, but it was not that. His reassurance was always strong, but it was not that either. Perhaps it was simply nerves. “Can I ask you a philosophical question?”
The big cat tilted his head at her, flicking an ear. “Of course?”
“If you had to do sothing, and to do that, you had to want to do it, then is it truly desire, or is it duty?”
“That’s not a philosophical question. Or, if it is, it’s only in the most attenuated of senses. I rather gather that it’s more of a technical question.”
Lily winced. “You’re a very perceptive cat.”
“I strive to be.” She was silent for a long mont, waiting for his response. “There is a… delineation; we— cats, humans, the both of us and perhaps even more, the spirit beasts and the immortals of heaven, like to divide the world into a set of understood categories and concepts. Green and blue; heaven and earth, peace and disorder. Unity and severance. Yet the truth of matters so rarely falls along such simple lines, no?” She nodded. “I think… sothing can be a duty while still being a pleasure, and pleasure can be a duty and yet retain, still, its inherent characteristic.”
“That…” she breathed in deeply, tasting on the air the— new growth, scent of flowers, leaves, unfurling their new life forth into the uncaring world— so lovingly. “That makes sense. Thank you, Avyr.” She stood, gathering up all the papers and neatly putting them into a stack, and sliding them into the folder she’d brought out with her for that very purpose. No reason in leaving a ss, after all. “I’m going to make the technique now.”
“Do you need to return?”
“No, you can stay out here if you want. It’s pleasant enough, and so long as you keep your qi away from the formation it’s not going to disrupt it or anything…” and as long as she didn’t get distracted— but if there was one person whose presence wouldn’t make her self conscious, if there was one person whose presence was reassuring more than anything else then it would be Avyr.
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She was ready. Her heart was ready— and what was left for her after that was to follow through.
Quickly, she grabbed all the components of the ritual. So of them, like the stones, she could simply reuse from the last attempt she’d made, placing them back into the sa spot they’d been in last ti. One by one they settled into their proper places, heavy with a burdened purpose— she could feel, in her ticulousness, the way the very qi of the world around her began to shift and change, and swirl in newfound purpose.
Then, she set up the rest. The talismans, fluttering under the zephyr spring breeze. The lines in the ground, this ti scratched into the earth with her stylus and filled in with a qi-bearing sand, and inked, until black seals covered the courtyard for feet around her. Beyond that— new, from the last ti— she carefully drew a second layer of formations, this one to keep out any inimical qi elents. She’d developed that more as a failsafe than anything, but it was more than that— it carried in itself the aspect, the essence of the ridians she sought to open, and in doing so served almost as a ditation. It carried the essence of what she sought to accomplish, and in building itself, she built in her spirit the idea of it.
It swirled around and around, a beautiful, chaotic thing— yet it was not chaos, rather order so profound and obtuse that it rely seed to be utter disorder. Compared to the slapdash thing she’d made back on the mountain when she’d helped Avyr ascend to Opening, this formation was on an entirely different level.
For a mont, she lost herself in the making—
For a mont, she returned to herself, in snippets and in starts, as her body moved according to the very sa practice she’d put so much effort into over the course of the past weeks. Almost liturgic— almost a dance, graceful as the falling leaf, more resolute than a tidal wave.
The last rune was inked onto the courtyard ground, and she settled into center, and—
“Be still, my spirit.” She whispered to herself, and brought her qi into stability, a sharp shock of peace settling over her. A clarity, from the frenetic creation and now to the stillness at the end of it— and soon, to the beginning again. From life, to death, and from death, to life. Generating yin and yang, twirling into each other again and again in beautiful dance that did not, was not happening— yet in which the essence of that generation still hung heavy over her.
She breathed in.
She breathed out, and let the breath escape her, the gentlest wisp of air surrendered to spring. “The first connects to the third. The third connects to the ninth. The ninth is the first. The first is free, and freedom is its chain…” it was an almost nonsensical mantra, and yet it carried— deeper than the typical, technical depiction of formations, an intent. She’d made it up on the fly from a combination of so of the stranger parts of the jade slip— which she’d not really understood until she’d gone on her research spree after talking to Instructor Min— and the stories from those very books.
Slowly, almost reverently, she folded her hands into the spirit severing handseal. Slowly, she closed her eyes and turned, instead, to her perception of the qi around and within her— the gentle purity of it all, the flickering and bloody fla, the lines of the formation and her own desire…
She breathed in.
She breathed out, and activated the formation one more ti.
Pain. The pain was just the sa as the last ti, a blinding agony from the severed part of her spirit, searing her with its terrible force. It rushed forth from her and crashed against her, and slunk down through every piece of her, and— she pushed past it, grabbing with a sudden and almost artful movent the qi in her dantian, sending it forth as straight as an arrow—
It was not an arrow. It was the first line of a formation, it was the ascension of her soul, it was her, her desire, her great working. It pierced through the shard of her spirit, carving in the essence of what she’d wanted to carve in, and this ti— this tiit held! For a second, and then longer, at first tenuous then solid in the hovering wisp of spirit, it was real. It was real! She laughed, opening and closing the aperture of the not-ridian…
For a second. Then, it changed.
Unlike the first one, which had been wrong imdiately, her second attempt failed to a slow and creeping corruption. It was the corruption of a string, shredding into a thousand frayed threads. It was the sinking corruption of a rotting fruit, slowly slumping in itself into a putrid and sickeningly sweet juice. It was the quaking of earth and the terror of heaven, and—
She forced herself to look closer, to see what was going wrong— and she saw, as the ridian tore itself apart in front of her, the cracks in the technique and the way it split under the strain of the qi coming into it— the way it ca alive beneath the bloody qi, and was slain by its terrible presence. The way the whole world seed to reject it— to dare try and surpass the heavens?
She did not know if she imagined that. She did not know, truthfully, if that was her own mind, turned back on itself—
She did know, though, that her technique was failing.
Pooling her strength in that immaterial plane, even subsud beneath the formations and her own diations, and her panic— she reached forth and cast away the scrap of spirit, watching it glitter and spark and bleed as it tore itself to so many shreds. Then, with a cry, she collapsed backwards—
Avyr was there to catch her. It was so fast, so sudden, that all she could do was blink up at the big cat as he stared down at her with concern. “Are you alright?”
“I’m… well enough.”
“Did it work?”
“No.” She winced, flinching back— but of course, Avyr did not look disappointed in her. Rather, he just nuzzled a little closer, against the suddenly cold spring day, holding her in that long mont as her very spirit ached in the aftermath… “No, it didn’t work. It just… crumbled at the last mont.” Did the heavens have it out for her? Was she destined to fail?
Together. They sat there, together, as she picked up the pieces of a second failure, grieving at the fate of it all. So close… she despaired, but she did not give up hope. One more chance.
Above it all, the sun shone down on the courtyard, on them, so harshly.
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