Threads 419-Taming Winter 8
The very first steps were cloying and slow. It felt like walking face first into a pool of mud. The darkness of the stairwell did not just cling, it dragged and it pulled and it suffocated, threatening to choke and flood her lungs. It was cold in a way that transcended anything physical, a want so dense it had congealed into something near solid.
But it was not directed at them. It was not a hunger for light and warmth, seeking to devour the spark of their lives. It was a yearning for something much further away than that, and so, although it was difficult, Ling Qi was able to put one foot in front of the other and advance. She could feel Hanyi doing the same, her shoulders hunched, and through her, she could get a sense of Bao Qian's qi.
His art was of gold. Gold was something near worthless to cultivators, save for its neutrality and inability to hold qi. Neither the cloying cold nor the sobbing underlying it could reach him, she thought. He was closed off to it, inviolate and numb under the mantle of his art. It was not a technique she would have expected from someone so gregarious.
But then, he was almost always smiling a professional’s smile rather than his own.
Through the murk, they descended, step by step, and as they did, the low susurrus of sound beneath the darkness grew in volume. It was an unending weeping, the ugly, wet, wracking sobs of a person in the depths of grief. The sound bounced and echoed in the dark, a distorted cacophony of melancholy echoes that seeped into her mind and threatened to sand away everything that was bright in her by mere proximity. The lack of intent in its effect was the only thing which made the sound bearable.
She squeezed Hanyi's hand tightly.
They emerged from the stairs in pitch blackness. As they took that final step, the gloom parted. The reflective ice of the floor was as much a gray monotone as the pillars of ice which surrounded the surprisingly small cavern chamber, just a few meters across. The sobs were much louder here and mingled with the burbling of the cavern spring which took up the center of the chamber and the figure which hunched over atop it.
White robes, as pure as the fresh driven snow but rumpled and unkempt, hung low around near skeletal shoulders. The figure’s hands clutched the edge of the pool, pallid skin fading into black frostbitten talons as sharp as razors. Matted, long black hair tumbled down past a hidden face to float atop the spring waters. The figure’s head tilted toward them, revealing a single, red-rimmed white eye. A black tear trail ran down a sunken gray cheek.
[ABANDONMENT]