Twinned Destinies: A Cultivation Progression Fantasy

Ruyi couldn’t breathe. There was a burning in her throat, and as he pulled back the spear, tip glistening red, gouts of blood gushed out with it.

The air was trapped in her lungs—she could hardly wheeze. Her wounds healed fast now but something about this one, the way it burned, told her it wouldn’t close. This she knew dimly, by feeling. The rest of her was looking at his face.

Jin?

He stabbed her through the chest, just barely missing her heart, and a blast went off in her. Heat swamped her insides. She gasped but all that came out was more blood. The pain shocked her awake; she sprawled back, cringing, as he fell upon her.

She thrust up her paws, not to strike but to block, cringing, managed to turn aside his spear—for an instant. Then it swept around and carved a burning arc through her side.

Stop, she tried to say, falling back, holding up her paws, but he just kept hurting her. Two more holes ripped at her legs. She couldn’t take much more. She was bleeding too much.

She turned and fled.

He gave chase.

She burst out the smoking maw into the tunnel, moss-eaten stone which ran on and on in a seemingly endless loop. She leapt up a flight of stairs but he seemed right at her heels. She could feel the heat of his spear, could see its red glare at her sides, lighting the path ahead. He caught her in the flank and she yowled.

Up and up the spiral they went until a square of light appeared, and a muddle of piercing sounds washed through, screeches, steel on steal, the sounds of battle, but she didn’t care. She burst through.

She remembered this place. It was the arena she’d seen Jin fight in so many years ago. Many of the wooden upper seatings had caved in, were overrun by colonies of green.

Everything below was chaos.

The lower decks swarmed with demons. There were Imperial Guardsmen trying to hold them back but it seemed for every guardsmen there were three demons. It was worse at ground level, in the arena where she stood; it was a boiling sea of darkness here. She couldn’t believe how many demons there were. There were Guardsmen here, too, struggling in a wide semicircle to hold a dozen fronts. But each was losing. Men fell, shoved back, crying out.

Jin burst out behind her.

But he froze. He wasn’t looking at her anymore; he was looking beyond her.

“Ah!”

She whirled around. Cao!

Nine foot tall, humanoid with tattered black wings, and silky black skin mottled with gray ridges, a smiling angel of death. “Welcome, dear Hero. We’ve been expecting you.”

We?

“Dricus, if you please?”

Another Demon King aura burst out behind them. A flaming tail speared at Jin and he turned, thrusting his spear to intercept—

—stone spikes tore out of the ground so fast they seemed like snakes striking. Ruyi was sure they’d ran Jin through but he twisted out of the way, diving over them.

Right into Cao, who stood above him, sighing, before one swift wing batted him out of the air.

Ruyi roared. She coiled to spring, a mouthful of cold air, but when she leapt she found herself snapping back. Her leg was caught, and not just in stone. It felt like it was trapped under some great boulder; the pressure was so heavy her bones felt on the verge of shattering.

The Cao walked over, humming, and hit her in the belly.

It felt like the weight of a mountain falling on one point. She folded. Things that only just healed burst back open. She felt bones shattering. Blood welled up in her mouth and her eyes went blurry with tears.

Then he hit her again in the same spot and she was sure her heart had stopped.

She curled up as he buried her under his fists, one by one. She wasn’t sure why he kept hitting her. It felt like everything in her had already broken. Then something in her back gave out, and she howled as her spine was made dust.

Her lower half sagged. She couldn’t feel her legs. She hoped Jin had made it out, at least, and then she saw him limp in the grasp of a bull-demon.

She tried to move, tried to get to him, but the ground held her fast.

Red glimmered at the edge of her vision…

The bull demon was frowning, his head turning toward the red. It seemed half the heads in the battle were turning in one direction.

***

Sen fell to a knee, gasping.

She’d done all she could. She knelt on the third floor of the Lower Balconies, the blood of eight Core demons on her blade, but she was one sword. There were too many. Each time she cut one down more surged to fill the gap.

Every day she waited for Ruyi’s letter to come before she went to sleep. She was up until midnight waiting; even at dawn it didn’t come. She’d felt awful. She tried to remember what she’d written, read back every line in her head wondering which she’d screwed up on, wishing she’d made a copy of the letter. Maybe it was her salutation? It was always the little things she got wrong.

A day passed. She sent another letter. No reply.

She went straight to Ruyi’s house with flowers after that—she read that was what you were meant to do—to ask what she’d done wrong. There she discovered Ruyi missing. She’d found the Mistress was missing, too—called to attend some Li Clan emergency meeting.

Sen had heard of no such meeting.

Then she knew something was wrong.

She’d fired off a letter to the Mistress; hopefully it’d catch her at her inn. She’d searched the manor, found the note in Jin’s bedroom. It told him to come alone. He hadn’t—he’d brought the Guard, and unbeknownst to him, her too.

But it was not enough.

There were just too many; it seemed an infinity, a darkness vast as the night sky. She could scarcely clear her corridor. How had they gotten so many demons in?

As she cast her gaze over the railing she saw the Imperial Guard, splotches of gold and white, smothered one by one.

In minutes it would be over.

Where was Ruyi? Sen had to find her, had to sneak through; she didn’t care about the rest of them. She just needed to get to Ruyi. Ruyi needed her. So Sen couldn’t fail, not here. She burst through three Feral demons with ugly strokes, ramming her blade more than slashing. Already more poured down the corridor’s end like hounds, tongues lolling, eyes huge and red and wild… there were just too many…she bit down. Just one more charge, just one—

She felt an aura flare below her, bright and harsh as sunrise on a cold winter’s morning.

The demons swiveled, howling, and she turned too, gasping, leaning over the railing. That aura—!

***

“Is that—?” Cassius breathed.

Dricus dropped the Hero, cursing heavily. “She is not meant to be here!” He was angry as he wheeled on Cassius, angry and scared. “You promised me!”

“What is it?” Marcus’s voice, leaking out from the scrying glass, muffled in Cassius’s robes.

“It appears,” said Cassius dryly. “The Butcher has entered the battle.”

***

Below Sen, in the arena, a sea of writhing black against little islands of white. A battle fought on a dozen fronts—a losing battle.

Then, at the middle of those white islands, a single point of red appeared.

It became a line, running out from the edge, moving fast. When Sen squinted she made it out.

One sword cleaved a bloody path straight through the sea. Bodies leapt in front of her and it was like they were air. The Mistress solved them in one stroke; she moved with such contempt; she didn’t even bother to slow as their halved bodies showered the earth in blood.

Sen had never understood why they called her the Butcher. Mistress Li’s swordplay had always seemed so elegant to her. But this… there was a primal violence to the way she moved, a violence which shocked even Sen.

The battlefield did not all react at once. The battle was fought on a dozen fronts; then a shock rippled through them. The sea bowed inwards like one great wounded organism as more and more recognized the threat. Demons, Larval, Feral, Core, even King thrust themselves before the Mistress, and their bodies became nothing. She met no resistance. A dozen fronts became ten became eight as the whole of the demon horde collapsed inwards, trying to stop her, until at there was just one front, an army desperately tried to halt the advance of just one woman.

They could not slow her blade a fraction of a second.

“From Chaos,” Sen whispered. “Simplicity.”

One bloody line carved its way through Infinity.

Sen tried to imagine the mind inside the body, the mind driving that sword. Puzzles thrust themselves at the Mistress in a lightning blitz and she solved each of them in the barest fraction of a second, one after another. Her every move was clean, the Technique perfect, even improvised and thrust in this mad mess.

Sen thought she knew the sword. She thought she was damned good at it. But seeing this…

Mistress Li was operating at a level she could not begin to comprehend. She could scarcely believe it was possible; it was like the Mistress had been possessed by some wrathful god.

***

“Retreat!” cried Marcus.

Cassius laughed.

“I’ve seen enough! I will not lose you too. Kill the Hero, then flee! Go—”

“Are you serious?” Cassius’s contempt was plain on his face.

“Listen to me,” Marcus snarled. “You cannot stand with her—”

Cassius plunged a fist through the glass, shattering the connection.

Dricus gaped. “What have you done?”

Cassius slapped him.

“You call yourself a Demon King, you gormless little worm?” He laughed again. “A scourge on our race appears before us! The slayer of the dragon-lords, the defiler of Tarsus! The Heavens have given us this chance!”

His tattered wings unfurled, dripping shadow like tar, and he licked his cracked lips. “Stand with me, Dricus! They shall sing of this battle.”

***

Marcus buried his face in his hands. “What does he think he’s doing?!” said Caius.

“Fighting her,” Marcus groaned. “Do you know how many Demon Kings I’ve heard give me the same speech? They all think they’ll be the one to slay her. At last. What a glorious thing that’d be, they imagine.”

He sighed at the ground. “They all think they’re special.”