Forge of Destiny Threads 544-Fantasia 7

Ling Qi heard the cry of outrage from the crowd of spider villagers and saw the fire spirit stiffen, mouth open and eyes wide, just before she lost touch with their old location. That would keep Hongpao busy for a while, as they collected her sister spirit.

She reached out a hand among the eye-watering flashes and lights that came with diving through a twisting channel of the deeper liminal and caught Bao Qian's. He was heavy, like a stone trying to sink in a river, but it was no trouble for her to support him.

The sensation of motion rushed over and around them. Glittering stars flashed by at impossible speeds. There was the shadow of a reedy marsh and still lake water in the corners of her vision, the edges of the labyrinth they were bypassing.

Then, her feet were on solid ground once more. She stood on polished wooden boards, deformed enough by age and moisture to creak under Bao Qian's feet as he stumbled a half-step and swayed, disoriented by the sudden jaunt she had taken them on.

They found themselves in a dim room, once the inner shrine of a temple, by the incense burning altar and tarnished silver idol which stood over it. The idol was a sculpture depicting the phases of the moon, supported by clouds that wove through the delicate object. There was little else save for soot stains and empty braziers.

A thick, knobbly woolen blanket was stretched across the floorboards, and on it lay a young girl. Her hair was deep blue, and her face was pale with bright yellow, catlike eyes and twitching fuzzy ears akin to Su Ling's. She lay on her belly, bare feet kicking in the air, the hem of her rumpled gown lying around her knees. Beside her was a plate stacked high with treats and sweets, and in front of her was an ornate mirror, perfectly round, set in a metal frame enameled with many colors over the shaped motif of falling autumn leaves.

Colors and shapes played across the mirror. Ling Qi recognized a swatch of bright red swimming away from her sight as she raised her eyes from the mirror to the young spirit's face. A rice cracker dangled from the spirit’s lips, half bitten through, as she stared at them with wide eyes.

Her teeth clicked together; the cracker fell onto the blanket. Lanchi gulped. "Geh."

Ling Qi smiled sweetly. "Hello. Your grandmother has been wondering about her mirror, Miss Lanchi."

The spirit shoved at the blanket to push herself up and scrambled back, clutching the mirror in one hand.

Well, that wouldn't do at all, would it?

The ensuing scuffle was not a long one. Lanchi, much like her friend Li Suyin, definitely did not prioritize her physical cultivation enough.

After their short confrontation, the blanket lay rumpled on the floor, and the snacks had spilled, scattering crumbs between the floorboard. Bao Qian sighed, his head and shoulders soaked by one of the autumn maiden’s techniques.

The girl herself dangled from his outstretched hand, looking not unlike a grumpy kitten being held up by the scruff, down to the drooping ears and bonelessly dangling limbs. Ling Qi fanned a hand over Bao Qian, steadily drawing away the water that had soaked him into a sprinkle of falling snowflakes. Her other hand held the madam's mirror.

"Are you ready to respond like a civilized person now?" Ling Qi raised an eyebrow.

"Yes, ma'am," Lanchi muttered mutinously, glaring at her. Ling Qi arched an eyebrow, and the spirit looked away.

Ling Qi glanced at Bao Qian, giving a nod. He huffed in amusement, lowering Lanchi to the floor. "As you wish,

She didn't dignify that with a response. She was putting on her serious face right now. She remained tense for a moment to see if the spirit would bolt, but she did not, merely pouting and crossing her arms.

Conceptually, Lanchi was the least energetic, after all. Her qi was that of the lake, symbolizing reflections and contentment. The others would be far more combative than she.

"No hard feelings now. You had to know you'd get caught eventually, sneaking out with your grandmother’s treasures. You’ve had your fun," Ling Qi warned, glancing down at the mirror. She let her eyes ghost across the glass, feeling the almost magnetic attraction it had to her eyes.

Images swam, and she spied hearthfires and mountain vistas. She saw herself, her friends, and her kin. She saw Mother smiling and Biyu grown and strong, a flourishing Shenglu, and…

She shook herself a little. Lanchi watched her intently.

"We're no mortals to be easily entranced." Bao Qian chuckled, plopping a hand down on top of the spirit’s head and earning a disgruntled sound. "Just what did you think you were doing?"

"'S fun watching mortals do lovey dovey stuff. Least until Hongpao got so that it interfered," Lanchi grumbled.

"Being a voyeur is no responsible use of divination," Ling Qi scolded.

There was a connection, she realized, a thread of qi stretching off, red and blue bound and connected, and also gold and blue. These spirits had their own connections with each other.

She considered the mirror, tracing her fingers over the filigree of the painted frame. The question was which sister to pursue next.

"Hongpao will keep, and besides, it isn't in the nature of fire to hide itself," Ling Qi rationalized.

"I suspect just standing out in the open and playing a tune might draw her like a moth," Bao Qian agreed. "Keep to the original plan then, and make use of the mirror for our hunt?"

"Ugh, I can't believe I got nabbed just because a couple of humans want to catch my stupid sister. Grandmama won't take kindly to thieves, you know. You're gonna be in..."

Ling Qi grinned, meeting the young spirit's eyes, whose new confidence seemed to wither away at her expression.

"... Oh."

"Madam Autumn did send us to retrieve her 'naughty grandchildren.'" Bao Qian patted Lanchi on the shoulder apologetically. "Use of the tools you made off with is part of the deal."

The young autumn maiden looked as if she had bitten into something sour. She spoke her thoughts aloud slowly and with dread. "She let us get away with it. Like, obviously, she did; I'm not Hongpao. I know we didn't trick Grandmama, but I thought she was just being nice and letting us play!"

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"I'm afraid that you were only ever a pawn in a scheme beyond you," Ling Qi intoned with faux seriousness. "It doesn't have to be so bad. If you don't give us any trouble, I have a few sweets from the waking world I can share."

Lanchi regarded her with some suspicion. "And what do you want?"

"I'd like you to tell us about the mirror and your sister, Jinli. I'm afraid your grandmother was clear that there was no going back until we had collected all three of you," Ling Qi replied.

Technically, she had only said the two of them could not return with one fairy at a time. She had made no provision for the fairies returning on their own. So, her paraphrasing was only a small twist on what she , and probably not even wrong, given the intent of the trial.

The girl's ears flicked irritably, and she scuffed her bare foot across the floor. "You’re saying that you came to the palace and you don't even know what Grandmama's treasures do?"

Bao Qian crouched down to come closer to the young spirit’s eye level. "We've heard our share of tales, but surely, the young miss has greater insights than strangers to the court."

"Of course, we can figure its uses out on our own, but that only leaves you standing here, snackless, for even longer," Ling Qi said flippantly.

Lanchi flicked her eyes toward the overturned plate, contemplating the scattered sweets. Since the spirit believed they already knew at least some of the mirror's properties, it would be more difficult to lie, not knowing where the gaps in their knowledge lay. Of course, between the two of them, they really did have enough folklore and knowledge of the rites surrounding Madam Autumn to make a decent guess.

The Mirror of Future’s Past could allow the contemplations of choices not taken and futures no longer in reach. It was a potent tool of cultivation and self-reflection, allowing its user to examine that which they had left behind, and ponder what could have been. However, its limitation was that it could not show anything further than the present.

For that same reason, it was deadly. It could mire a cultivator in a swamp of regrets from which there was no escape. And of course, it was also a potent scrying focus, if one could gain control of the reflection enough to direct it.

"Grandmama's mirror is easy for me to use, 'cause it can't show me stuff branching from before I was made, so there isn't a bunch of stuff about me cluttering up my shows," Lanchi said bluntly, confirming her suspicions.

Like Sixiang was in the beginning, Lanchi was probably a very new existence, even on a human timeframe.

"But, like, the mirror to show you stuff, you know?" the young spirit continued. "It isn't a mirror about or and it likes regrets the way I like honey and sugar. That's why you can use it to watch mortals do lovey dovey stuff. There's soooo many regrets there, from acting not acting."

"So, the best path to using the mirror for normal scrying efforts is to focus it on a past path, which might take you to what you want to see, rather than simply trying to force it to show a present or future place against its nature?" Bao Qian theorized.

"Yeah," Lanchi said. She said it a little too quickly. Ling Qi didn't show any expression to indicate she had noticed. Lanchi wasn't lying but she was maybe leaving something out.

"Hm, that is good advice," Ling Qi said after a moment. "Turning to your sister, Jinli. You wanted to stay in and entertain yourself by watching mortals. Hongpao wanted to use your grandmother's zither to receive adulation from her subjects. What is it that the third sister wanted, and why did she need the Abundance Reaper for?"

The Autumn Madam's sickle was a far less complicated artifact. It represented the madam’s role in the harvest and as the bringer of abundance. It could cut even a single rice plant into a whole sack of grains, and transform even the most meager spiritual herb or beast carcass into resources even a higher realm would covet. It was probably the most dangerous artifact, if only for the temptation it represented.

Lanchi crossed her arms defiantly. Then, her eyes were drawn to the snacks. Bao Qian had picked up the plate and was cleaning up the mess and adding new treats to replace those that had been ruined, humming innocently.

"Jinli wants to go far away. She wants to find the gate out of Grandmama's court and see another autumn, instead of being reborn like the rest of us." Briefly, Lanchi looked uncomfortable, a flash of regret in her eyes. "She's greedy. She's looking for a special herb to harvest, a millennium ginseng or something? I dunno what that is."

Bao Qian grimaced. "I can think of at least a dozen subspecies of ginseng that a layperson might call millennium ginseng, and I'm no expert on herb lore."

"Still, it's a lead," Ling Qi allowed. "Was Jinli the only one of you really trying to run away from home?"

She definitely had her suspicions about the madam's plot now, but she also knew that Jinli’s drive would make that spirit the hardest one to take back.

Lanchi scoffed. "Hey! I was definitely going to live like this! I don't need to go back to Grandmama. I'm great at being liked, not like stupid Hongpao always making a scene. It's easy to make people smile, and then, they give you stuff you want! As long as you keep moving on, you can keep doing it forever and just watch them do fun stuff without any risk."

Bao Qian furrowed his brow at the outburst, looking like he wanted to say something, but shook his head.

"Of course. Well, we'll let you get back to your snacks in a moment. Why don't you come here and show me how you activate the mirror? Then, we can see which of your snacks can be salvaged," Ling Qi soothed, moving the conversation along.

She and Bao Qian shared a look as Lanchi nodded. They'd both keep an eye out for any tricks.

Ling Qi knelt down, holding out the mirror so that Lanchi could touch it as well, holding it between them.

Ling Qi watched the young spirit closely as she grasped the edges of the mirror.

"Here. This place is really good, cause you want to braid the lake and dream qi together like this. You sorta twist it around through the frame, and then kinda squish it out across the glass like this…"

The spirit's explanation was imprecise, but Ling Qi could see what she was doing pretty closely and so could Bao Qian.

"Why environmental qi instead of your own?" Bao Qian interrupted.

Lanchi paused. "Cause it tires me out more to use my own, and the lake is right here…"

The spirit was leaving points out again.

"Using your own qi makes the mirror react to it. It wants to show you paths untread and regrets, right?"

Lanchi pouted. "Yeah."

Ling Qi squinted at the sullen spirit, who huffed and returned to her demonstration.

"So, like, I don't have any targets in mind, so I just focus on a feeling I want to see explored, and the mirror reaches out for something close. It does other stuff but that's as much as I know!"

Images swam across the mirror's surface. Ling Qi did her best not to look too long at the wisps of people's lives in the waking realm and moments of small drama between people. She wasn't a voyeur after all and wouldn't be spying on people for no reason.

Definitely not because of the impropriety she glimpsed in flashes.

"Hm, focus on viewing a path where we pursued Jinli first, you think?" Ling Qi asked Bao Qian.

While Bao Qian thought, Lanchi snatched the plate of sweets out of Bao Qian's extended hands.

"That might be the best way to test the mirror, but it may very well just show us wandering lost in the madam's demesne. A path where we met these three before they scattered might give us hints, but is probably too far from the reality of what happened to give much detail."

"True," Ling Qi acknowledged. Her eyes fell on Lanchi, whose cheeks were full of sugar candies again.

The spirit blinked at her.

Ling Qi had an idea.