Threads 436-Green 5
"We Liiiived long, so long Horizon Blade learned to wield a sword as a writing stick and elder’s cudgel, no matter how it made his hands bleed. Master learned denied acts, weaving, carving, smithing. Soothed, wrapped his wounds. Day by day. Good days. Cold and sick with biting wind and wan sun. But. Good. Good. Good enOugH."
The repetition was clearly as much for her as them by this point, Ling Qi realized. It was a balm and a talisman against the black rage and hopeless spite which welled up from the beast's verdant core like an ill suppressed blight surging through her veins.
"But war comes, conflict comes, ruin comes. Master put out their own eyes, and so did not see. Horizon Blade had grown dull and crusted with ink. He fought. So many children/students/disciples. So. So. So MAny. Should have left them to storm wind and bOLt, and gone back to sea and sUN."
"But Master, Atamai, would not think such ," Kohatu said lowly. "... No. Kohatu-who-was would not think this. Cloud men came, and war tribe gathered. Dream men ignored the cloud men, gathered no host. Disciples Argent did instead. Joined. Fought. With spear and claw and fire and blade. Fought Fought. When Horizon Blade's student stood, we fOUght. When his curseblooded bride dug the cruel ritual from her ruined mountain, mASter carved out half their heart with the others. Forged their geas in blood and soul, an oath unbreaking to the cause of one hundred and eight and the young storm. Broken bodies, broken souls, so no StrENGth would be lost while one yet fought. Companions, oathsworn."
Ling Qi swallowed. These were dangerous secrets. It was known that under the decadent rule of the Hui, it was Yuan He and his companions who had rallied the broken lands of the south against Ogodei and who had taken in the remnants of the cities hurled into the sky, scoured from the earth or dashed against the uncaring mountainsides.
She had seen the memory of a vast funnel of wind ripping a city full of people out of the earth. Against that backdrop, she understood why the elders of the Argent Peak Sect had no patience for mercy. When that terror had still been hanging overhead, she could see how one might turn to even more forbidden means. And what was being alluded to here, rambled on in Kohatu's broken tones, was certainly that.
"No… Later. Later. When the hopeful sky was crushed, when the reprisals ended, when the clouds came again, and when Master had groWn feeble, they came. Descendants. MaSter’s students, companIOns, oathbearers. Without word, without warning, my master was betrayed and bUTCHerED! I was broken, and Atamai chained!"
Zhengui had already rocketed upward this time, feeling the tremors as she did. Kohatu's limbs thrashed, broken talons digging furrows in the dusty firmament, and lashing tail bringing down the entire vast cliffside of the canyon she had made in the ruined city.
She couldn't comprehend a reason for the elders to do this. Maybe she had misjudged Sect Head Yuan, Elder Ying, and all the rest, but even if Kohatu's master had their ruse discovered, would those people really betray someone they had fought beside like that? Be utterly merciless to the cloud tribes, but this story didn't feel right. This was not a thought she dared voice before the enraged Kohatu.