Twinned Destinies: A Cultivation Progression Fantasy

“You look like you could use some help.”

She hugged herself tighter.

“Are you here to kill me?” she mumbled.

“Probably not,” said the boy, shrugging. He invited himself in, unslung a knapsack, and casually tossed a dark shape at her. Reflexively she snatched it. She felt rough cloth under her fingers.

“A tunic,” said the boy.

She hesitated. “What do you want?”

“For the tunic? Nothing. It’s a gift.” He smiled. “It’s human tradition to bring gifts, isn’t it? As a gesture of goodwill? Or have I committed some faux pas?” Something about the way he spoke reminded her of someone, but she couldn’t quite place it.

She felt embarrassed as she looped it over her head and tugged it on. She wasn’t used to folk watching her dress, and she honestly should’ve been far beyond modesty with where she was. It was a little tight, but it’d do.

He’d been staring at her the whole time. His eyes were so big they dominated his face, big and black, and when you stared into them you got the sense you were looking into a dark with no end. She curled into herself more. It wasn’t that his gaze was lascivious, but it felt like he was dissecting her with his eyes.

“Ah,” he said, blinking. He looked around, as though seeing the temple for the first time. “I have committed a blunder. I must apologize. You humans have an expectation of privacy, don’t you? Ai….” He sighed. “Over the mountains we are much less… inhibited, less… ashamed? Of who we are. Clothing is a mark of status. The lesser demons walk around near nude. No one shames them.”

For a while she was silent. “What do you want?”

“To help,” he said simply.

“What do you really want?”

“To take you in, then. To shelter you. Truly.” The boy puffed out his cheeks. “Your Father has the army swarming the mountains, waiting. They seem to think you’ll break for the Demonlands. The rest swoop in from the west. They’re closing a net around you, I fear. You can’t stay here. You’ll need allies.”

“You’re not answering me.” She narrowed her eyes at him. Then she stood. Her eyes were still puffy but she set her mouth in a hard line. “And I don’t need your help. I don’t need anyone’s help.”

“Everyone needs someone,” said the boy. His smile widened, like he knew a secret she didn’t. “Even someone like you. Powerful, but… rough. A mine of potential, if only you had the proper guidance. Come with me, and my Master offers you the best guidance in the known world.”

“Who are you?”

The boy took a bow. Not the polite kind—rather like a showman finishing a trick onstage. “Junius, of the Domino Guard. Its is my sworn duty to protect my master.”

“And who’s your master?”

“The Lord of Demons. You know him as Marcus.”

She stilled.

“No.”

“No one would treat you better. We know of you. We know of the nature of your Demonform. Some among us would welcome you, but there are those who fear you in the Demonlands and would very much like to see you dead, but Marcus would spare you from them.”

“He tried to kill Jin!”

And he’d hurt Sen, and she wouldn’t ever forgive him for either.

The boy sighed. “So he did. And he would do it again, if given the opportunity. He told me you’d react this way. He told me it was not worth trying, but I never could resist shiny things. I had to get a look at you.”

His mouth pulled to one side of his face. “I’m not certain I like what I see.”

“So,” she said, balling her hands to fists. “Are you here to kill me, or not?”

“You sure do like to fight, don’t you?” said Junius, pursing his lips. “You don’t need to see everything so black-and-white, though Marcus tells me that is your nature. There is a space between an enemy and a friend, and perhaps that is where I can be. Perhaps that is where he can be.”

He looked to her, head cocked, waiting for an answer, and something in his blank stare made her hesitate.

He’d given off no aura, but she somehow she got the sense this was someone quite strong. He held himself like Mother held herself, or like Marcus had held himself. She got the sense he was not as innocent as he looked by far, nor as young. And she was just so tired of fighting.

“I don’t even know who you are. I just…I don’t want anything to do with you, or him, or any of you,” she said evenly. “Leave me alone, and I’ll leave you alone. I just want to go home.”

“I can understand that,” said Junius. She got the sense she’d said the right thing. He frowned at the ceiling. “What is home, do you think?”

She was silent. What was there to say to that?

“Home,” he continued, little hands clasped behind his little back. “Maybe home isn’t a place, or even a people. Maybe home is a snapshot in time. A warm feeling, in a place, with people you love, but it is all water in a river, isn’t it? Rivers flow on.”

She stayed silent.

Then—“You’re wrong,” she said fiercely. “You’re wrong.”

“Perhaps,” he said. “But I am very old. My brother makes it his business to know, but he sees the world as a great Encyclopaedia. I make it my business to know, too—but I see it as a great scroll of History, and so I like to think I know the human heart better than he does. In matters of human nature, and by extension demon nature, some things stay the same.”

“…Brother?”

She knew who he reminded her of—he spoke like Zhilei.

“Master, brother,” said Junius. He was smiling again. “Marcus is both. Though doesn’t it so often feel like our brothers are our masters? Sometimes it seems like our lives are rivers, made to flow around their stones.”

“You sure like rivers,” she said. She still wasn’t sure what his game was. “And speaking in tongues.”

“And rambling, alas. It runs in the family.”

He didn’t walk like a boy—he walked like an old man, a proud old man. He spoke like one too, and smiled like one, just without the wrinkles. It was all very unsettling.

“I won’t keep you longer. Here is another gift: a squadron of your Father’s troops will be where we stand within the hour. You should go. Now I have given you two gifts.”

He was waiting on her again.

“What?”

“It is my understanding that you humans have some concept of reciprocity.”

She tensed. “You said you didn’t want anything from me.”

“Not that. Verbally. A ‘thank you,’ perhaps?”

She couldn’t tell if he was serious or not. But he wasn’t going away. “…Thank you.”

“Very good.” He smiled again. “I must say, I find your customs delightful. Demons treat customs like clothes. They are merely another kind of clothing, aren’t they? You will never see someone address Marcus as ‘your highness.’ Those who are truly high do not need to be named so. Everyone knows.”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“Hmm,” said Junius. “Hmm. You amuse me. I do most things out of amusement, and the rest out of duty. It would not be very amusing to kill you—though that would have been my duty if you were still the girl Marcus remembered. Perhaps it will be amusing to see what you become. Yes. Goodbye, Ruyi.”

He wrinkled his nose. “Ruyi. You will need a better name. It doesn’t sound demonic at all.”

He was gone.

***

She didn’t know what to make of that. At least she was dressed now. She kept running.

The tunic was really one long slash cleverly folded; she realized she could loosen a strap here, tighten one there, and fit it to her. It’d come off easily if she Demonformed. She was seriously considering throwing it out, but she managed to talk down her pride.

Twice she nearly ran into hunting troupes, but she heard them coming and skirted around them through the smog. Once she came face-to-face with three men, all Core, but it’d taken little effort to fold them. She left them breathing. Maybe she was being soft and stupid—Father would have called her that, but she didn’t care.

She wasn’t sure what she still clung onto. Everyone probably hated her now. Everyone probably thought she was some cold-blooded murderer. No one would love her anymore, so why bother?

She was regretting not bringing a map, but as she wound her way through the wasteland, a landscape of hazes and ash-clouds and soot-piles, she saw a map would’ve been useless here. Maybe she should’ve gone west and tried living in the Frostbite Peaks—maybe she could be one of those hermits who lived in deep underground caves and subsisted off rainwater for a hundred years.

But she was lying to herself again. There was no place in human lands that was safe for her anymore. Besides, she could never be alone for very long; she’d drive herself mad. Now she thought about it, all her problems really came from her needing, usually desperately, to be around other people, to make them love her. It was exhausting being her. She wished she wasn’t who she was. Maybe none of this would’ve happened.

The distant bleakness was starting to resolve.

The jagged shapes of black mountains cutting up the horizon, climbing over one another, bigger and bigger, until they vanished into the clouds.

She’d made it to the Desolate Mountains, the border between human lands and the Demonlands.

As she got closer, she started straying from the warpath. She could see dozens of fortresses blocking off the front face of the mountains, where the army was. But she also saw, to the left, where the mountains started—as clumps of bare hills climbing higher and higher until they got into mountains proper.

Father was closing a net around her, Junius had said… the human lands were vast, but full of humans. There was nowhere she could go here. Everyone here was her enemy.

She had no choice. She knew why she’d run here, saw it now, even if she hadn’t known it consciously when she’d started running. She had to go where they wouldn’t come after her. She wasn’t sure what she’d find, but it had to be better than here…

Her thoughts were cut off by a scream. High, terrified—a girl’s scream.

Ruyi skirted a hill and saw it.

Three men stood on a beaten dirt road, knives out. Before them a carriage lay on its side, wheels spinning uselessly. The stallion that’d pulled it had its throat cut—as had a cloaked man spread out against the ground, pale fingers twitching around the hilt of a sword.

Ruyi took these things in peripherally. She only had eyes for the girl. The girl was breathtakingly pretty—cascading lustrous hair, high cheekbones, full lips, but it was her eyes that really struck Ruyi, soft and doe-like—eyes that met Ruyi’s, and widened.

“Please,” cried the girl. “Help me!”

The men had hardly gotten their swords up when Ruyi smashed through them. They went down shockingly easily.

“Are you okay?” said Ruyi, turning to her. But the girl was already on her, clutching her arm.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

Ruyi instantly reddened. “Um—“

Only now did she see what the girl was wearing. Was that meant to be a hanfu? But it was worn backwards, and with a shoulder bare, the way you’d wear a toga.