Commission: Phantom Line-Bloodfall 1

AN: So, this is the first of a new type of commisssion. 'Phantom Line' pieces are AU's depicting events from essentially alternate timelines to the main story. Enjoy.

Ling Qi took in a small, sharp breath as the Sect Head's words and the audience's noise washed over her. Her heart was thundering in her ears. Her opponent knew it too, looking at her with narrow eyes and a malicious smile.

“So, how many rounds you supposed to go before you surrender, miss maid? Or has the snake set you to suicide on me to try and wring an extra technique out of my arsenal?”

“I am not a sacrifice, Lady Sun, but nor will I surrender unless your spear is at my throat. Please, let us have a good match,” Ling Qi replied softly, not rising to her bait.

Meizhen had taught her better than that.

If she was going to be the attendant of a white serpent, she needed to have an utterly imperturbable face.

That day at the lake… Her course had been set then. Even if Meizhen had tried to withdraw, tried to dissuade and berate her from holding on to the treasure she had grasped. The offer of the Sect, the offer of the Cai…

She’d refused them both, and forced Meizhen to answer, looking her in the eye, whether she had truly wanted things to end between them.

There was only one answer, deep down. She knew it before she ever asked the question.

Ling Qi slid her flute from her sleeve as the air shimmered, and the world drowned in green. Humidity beat down on her, fighting against the chill freeze of her breath and skin, a cloud of wispy mist forming from the conflicting temperatures around her.

Master Zeqing had been reluctant to teach her more than one art, but the plea she had made to the ice woman, that she needed every scrap of strength to stay with the one she treasured…

It was good that Meizhen didn’t mind her icy skin too much.

“Y’know, I do actually feel bad for ya,” Sun Liling said casually, her bloody spear flashing in the dull light that filtered through the canopy as she spun it lazily. “Honestly, what she’s made you do…”

“My lady has never forced a single thing upon me,” Ling Qi replied, standing tall. The pale bleach blue-white lines in her wavy hair shimmered, flakes of frost falling from the mist, and her shadow writhed under her feet, the only sign of her agitation and fear slipping through.

“...Yeah, you’re completely lost huh? What’s done is done?”

Deep down, she knew that she didn’t need to win; she just had to push and force Sun Liling to expose her techniques and weaknesses. The girl was absolutely right about that.

But she hated that smug condescending pity on her face. As if she was something wrong as if they were something wrong. Meizhen was the one who needed to win here, to reach the future they wanted.

But she wanted to win so badly. For the insults, for the attacks, for everything.

Zhengui began to materialize, her domain blade thrummed, down in her shadow. Sun Liling matched her, Dhartiri emerging, an emerald chakram thrumming in the air.

They moved.

Sun Liling’s hungry thorn flashed across the distance between them, and Ling Qi blew apart into a blizzard of shadows and snow, coating the trees and foliage with rime. Gui bellowed, his trunklike legs carrying him forward like an avalanche, embers, and liquid flame already jetting from Zhen’s mouth.

But even as wind and shadow and biting cold, she felt a hot slash of pain, down in her soul, and when she reformed upon a high branch, the skin of her cheek was cracked, like broken porcelain, liquid darkness oozing from the wound and dissolving in the air.

Sun Liling’s eyes fixed on her with a predatory gleam as armor spun into existence around her body, the three-faced snarling demon mask overtaking her face. Skeletal limbs clutching harsh and jagged weapons rose to face her.

Ling Qi raised her flute to her lips and played the scream of a whiteout storm through the mountain peaks.

Steam erupted from the conical rip of white through the leafy foliage, trunks flash freezing and burst from swelling sap, leaves reduced to rime and dust, the soil cracking…

And Zhengui barreled from the snowstorm, wreathed in steam and glowing heat, only for Dhartiri to spin away, out of his path, a graceful dancer's pirouette, the thin scarves that wrapped her body edges with ice.

Their spirits were getting further away, which was well with her. Zhengui’s style and hers clashed yet, though they had some ideas. She grimaced, leaping backward, blurring as Sun Liling’s chakram ripped through an ancient tower of a tree with a shrieking buzz of spinning blades.

And Liling was behind her, a cage of weapons reaching out.

Her shadow spun up, as blades carved through the sheet ice that had replaced her, the needlelike blade jabbing through a gap in Sun Liling’s bloody armor.

Ling Qi, slammed through a tree on the opposite side of the clearing in an explosion of snowflakes and sawdust.

“Don’t know what you think you’re doing,” Sun Liling said dryly. “You think I’m not defended ‘gainst poison.”

Ling Qi didn’t reply with words, only the howl of a cyclone of snow. 

There was no defending against Sun Liling. Her blades pierced armor, warped fate to strike even when dodged. The qi running through her blood made her near impervious to toxins, even the creeping cold her master had taught her to wield.

Nearly.

She could feel the pinprick dot of frozen emptiness imperceptibly clinging in Sun Liling’s blood stream. She had, at most three more pricks before even Sun Liling’s arrogance would be pierced and she would forcefully cleanse her blood.

Her tongue touched the capsule, affixed to her tooth.

Honestly, I’ve not brewed a venom like this before, meant to be carried on a spiritual art. This reagent…”

“Master Zeqing gave it freely. A single drop of blood, to unite us, was a small gift to a student.”

“I don’t like this plan. You needn't risk yourself so dearly. Do you not have confidence in me?”

“I do, but I need to show my worthiness too. Don’t I?”

Meizhen had meditated long on its deadliness, before making this for her.

But first, first she had to ensure Dharitir’s end in Zhengui’s fire. There couldn’t be any interruption at the end, even the smallest thing could ruin her plan.

…Her brother was performing so well, occupying Dhartiri relentlessly, every bleeding pockmark and root tearing at his scales made her want to flinch… but she understood the sacrifices one was willing to make for love. She wouldn’t deny his resolve.

Her battle with Liling took her through the treetops, clashing again and again, she got the worst of every clash, if only by a little, patched of solidified blood froze and cracked, rime-blackened exposed skin here and there, but Ling Qi cracked, bled, broke a little more under every blow. One more pinprick. Then two…. A third… she’d been too optimistic.

Her dodges, the silhouettes of ice she left behind in her blizzards failed to protect or distract fully, every time.

They had too, to sell her final stratagem.

She felt it, the moment Zhengui’s shrinking, guttering qi signalled her. The next blow of Sun Liling’s spear carved through the center of a sculpture of ice, and Ling Qi’s qi washed out, cold and still

One Night Eternal.

It was a cage of qi, of the stasis of an unchanging snowy peak. Her Master had used a variant of this once, to unlock her musical qi. But she was far weaker than Master Zeqing. She had seconds.

Seconds were all she needed.

Zhengui’s roots dug into Dhartiri’s skin, and the grinning blood dryad tore her own flesh freely to escape.

Until Ling Qi’s Aria fell over her, staggering her in place.

She met Zhengui’s eyes as his guttering qi flared into magnificence.

She was so sorry, to ask him to hurt himself like this for her.

The blast of his eruption reduced trees to dust and carried her outward on its shockwave as it tore the earth apart.

Right into Liling’s spear. Her opponent's eyes were cold and hard. There was no amusement there anymore. Ling Qi gagged, inky black blood falling from her lips as the spear punched through her stomach and out of her back.

She could feel those pinpricks of cold, deep in the blood.

The problem with armaments forged of your own vitality… was that they were still you.

And the spear in her gut was very much in contact, flush with the darkness that she had invited into her body.

Ling Qi smiled a bloody smile, and cracked the capsule of venom on her tooth so that the gentle black mist inside could suffuse her breath.

And sang of Ending.