Fates Parallel Chapter 339 - Liminal

Healing the shadow spirit was a strange experience. None of Yoshika’s aspects had ever used Soulfire or Shadowflame the way she was using it now, but it came to her naturally—as though she’d always known what to do.

They weren’t really tools for healing, but they were all she had, and Eunae had been practicing. With her experience and the cooperation of the Kumiho’s fragment within her, Yoshika carefully stitched together the spirit’s wounds.

In her combined state, she gained a new understanding of what she was really doing. Spirits—and souls in general—were concepts made manifest. The shadow spirit wasn’t just a shadow spirit, it was Shadow. Yoshika’s soul wasn’t just a metaphysical source of her power, it was her.

The wounds and scars that Yoshika envisioned weren’t really analogous to physical damage—that was just a little trick she used to help guide her understanding.

What the wounds really represented was a kind of corruption. It was a place where some other concept had interfered and overridden the soul’s understanding of itself. The wounds weren’t Shadow, and they weren’t compatible with Shadow. They were something else, and they had their own meaning.

The scars on the other hand were places where the soul had tried to heal. The soul always healed itself—you couldn’t fundamentally change a person’s internal meaning to themselves. But they were also malleable—always in flux. People change. If the concept introduced was incompatible to the nature of the soul, then a compromise would be found.

Yoshika could see now just how insidious the Kumiho’s Soulfire really was. A powerful tool of fine manipulation that she’d been using like a bludgeon when she dared to use it at all.

Soulfire could potentially overwhelm a weak soul and force them to change. Most cultivators below the xiantian level didn’t have the tools necessary to truly defend against it. That was a naive way to use the power.

Its real strength came in the ability to tease the soul into changing itself. Small, gradual alterations over a long enough period could render a person utterly unrecognizable. There wouldn’t even be any ‘scars’ to identify—it would seem perfectly natural.

It was a terrifying potential, but Yoshika was happy to realize that she’d never done that, nor would she ever consider it. The temptation would always haunt her, though.

She turned her attention once more to what she was doing. Fine threads of black and green essence traced over the wounds and slowly brought them together to allow the soul to heal itself.

Soulfire gave her control—burning out the corruption and forcing the wounds closed. To a being of pure essence, it must have been quite painful. Yoshika felt for the spirit, but she persisted.

Shadowflame, on the other hand, was still quite new to Yoshika. It had only been part of her for a short time, and her understanding of it was still only intuitive. Where Shadow was the intersection of Light and Dark, her new fire felt like a different sort of twilight.

Once, it had allowed her to step between worlds—transporting herself and her friends halfway between the material and spiritual realms. Now, she was using it in a different way, but not a new one.

The black threads didn’t stitch the wounds together. Instead they connected the damaged portions of the spirit to its conceptual ideal, speeding up the natural healing process.

She’d done it once before. In fact, it was the first thing she’d ever done with her Shadowflame. When Muddy had been engulfed in Soulfire, it wasn’t enough to just remove it. The elemental’s already-tenuous connection to its soul had been entirely severed, and it would have simply dissolved into loose essence.

Instead, Heian had acted on intuition. Her Shadowflame burned away the liminal space between Muddy, the elemental of Earth and Water, and Iseul, the nascent identity that the elemental had started to cultivate. Since then, Iseul had strengthened the connection and continued to grow into her own being—though she still had a long way to go.

Had Yoshika’s domain of Unity been behind the nature of that change? It was a stretch to say that the combination of Soulfire’s control and Shadow’s twilight would create something like Shadowflame, yet it just felt right. To exist in two states at once, to be many and one, to break down barriers and unite the incompatible—that was unmistakably Yoshika.

Her ruminations came to an end as she finally finished patching up the wounded spirit. It wasn’t perfectly restored, but its existence wasn’t in any danger and she was confident that it would recover.

“I think that’s the best I can do. Are you feeling any better?”

The giant panther rose to its feet and bowed its head.

“I am restored. Thank you, my former kin.”

The spirit raised its head, its deep blue eyes staring into Yoshika’s. She resisted the urge to look away—her power didn’t work that way here.

“Former?”

"You have changed. Grown. We are no longer shades of the same color.”

Yoshika cocked her head.

“You’re not upset about that? When you shared Heian with us, we thought that helping her cultivate was part of your goal to become whole.”

The spirit was hard to read. Yoshika could feel its emotions, but it was too much. Every word was packed with so much meaning that she struggled to translate it, even Heian and the Kumiho within her.

And that understanding also came with the knowledge that it was essentially talking down to her like a toddler as it humored her silly question.

“No. To become something more is admirable. It is why we joined with the mortals. I am proud of you.”

That gave Yoshika pause, as something that had been bothering her for a long time bubbled up to the surface of her mind.

“You...really are a great spirit aren’t you? Not just some fragment of the same ancestor that we share with Ja Yun—you are that ancestor.”

The panther stared at her for a long moment, its expression unreadable, then huffed through the nose.

“No. Only a fragment, like you and the wizard. Larger, perhaps. Older. But only a fragment. We can never be whole.”

“I see. If you don’t mind me asking—why did you give us Heian then?”

“The ancient one asked for your protection, and you were kin.”

Yoshika tried to focus on the concept that the spirit was trying to convey. It was enormous and dense, packed with millennia of experience and topped with a spike of pain and anger. She winced and recoiled at the intensity of it.

“Ow! That’s—wait, Jianmo?! Are they the one that attacked you?”

“Yes. I gifted the ancient one a piece of myself before it fled, as I did for you. I vastly prefer what you did with my gift.”

Even as unreadable as the cat spirit was, the seething behind its words was clear enough.

“Why would they do that? It sounded like you were friends, and they spoke pretty favorably of you.”

“For you. You felt it, did you not? As you repaired me.”

Yoshika thought back to the corrupted essence, the irreconcilable meaning that had been imposed upon the spirit’s form. She hadn’t really tried to understand it before, but if she focused...

It hurt. Pain had been the medium of communication, and Yoshika could feel the fear and desperation behind the message, but she couldn’t make heads or tails of the content.

“Let me help.”

She felt the shadow spirit's essence wash over her. The pain disappeared and the weight of its experience crushed down on her. One by one, the pieces came together as the spirit helped her translate.

The voice was still that of the spirit, but the tone was unmistakably Jianmo.

“Hello girls. Sorry I’ve been so absent as your master—this naughty old man is more persistent than I thought. The good news is that comprehending this message in the first place means you’re ready for my master’s tomb and there’s nothing left to teach you until you ascend. Congratulations on graduating!

“The bad news is that I’m gone. Captured, sealed, or maybe even dead. I underestimated my enemies, and it came back to bite me. Maybe we’ll meet again, but don’t count on it. If you still want to brave the tomb to save your world or whatever, I won’t stop you, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to back up my promise of support.

“One last gift, my cute little disciples. As a final act of spite against my captors, I’m erasing my own memory of how to find the tomb and sending it along. If you’re clever, you probably already got it out of the avatar I left with you, but I left a couple of details out—I hope you did your homework~!”

Yoshika could practically feel the wink at the end of the message. It was just like Jianmo to act so flippantly in the face of their own defeat, but the feelings behind the message gave them away. Besides...

“She didn’t say it a single time. Not one ‘I don’t hate...’ As weird as it is to imagine, that might be the most serious I’ve ever seen Jianmo get.”

The shadow spirit dipped its head.

“The ancient one is a strange and chaotic being. I’m afraid that I was unable to find a way to express the final aspect in a way that your mortal mind can interpret.”

Yoshika sighed.

“I don’t hate the kid-gloves treatment, but this is important. Just hit me with it.”

She immediately hated the way the phrase sounded on her tongue, and swore never to utter it again. She’d find a better way to honor her absentee master or otherwise find a way to rescue them.

Feeling the shadow spirit’s domain reaching out, Yoshika braced herself. As expected, the unfiltered sensation of Jianmo’s final gift was overwhelming and painful. Nevertheless, Yoshika weathered it dutifully, committing each piece of it to her soul.

When it was over, it left her gasping for air. As she caught her breath, she tried to slowly go over what she’d learned, her brows furrowing as she did. Some of it, she already knew, but the rest...

“Shit.”

The xiantian grade cores that Jianmo had ordered her to collect what felt like an eternity ago hadn’t just been a frivolous demand. In all her years, she’d only managed to collect one of the two, and she’d expended it to protect Rika during her tribulation.

If she was interpreting Jianmo correctly, she’d need them to enter the Sovereign’s Tomb. The elements weren’t important—that part actually had been frivolous—but without their power, it would be impossible to open the doors by herself.

“Well, I suppose we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. It’s a bit late to go monster hunting now.”

The spirit crossed its paws and rested its chin on top of them.

“The message was not to your liking?”

“It wasn’t great, no. You seem to be getting comfy.”

“You have a comfortable soul. I find your nature pleasing, and I see why my fragment was able to thrive with you. There is some overlap in our domains.”

For just a moment, Yoshika felt the full weight of the spirit’s soul again, communicating a single concept in its purest form, without trying to dumb it down for her.

Kin.

Yoshika smiled.

“I thought you were the embodiment of shadow. How does that fit in?”

“A flawed mortal understanding. Are you not also an embodiment of shadow? Of control, and unity? Are you one or all or none of those things—or perhaps something greater still?”

She got the sense she wasn’t supposed to answer that as the spirit closed its eyes to nap. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree, apparently.

“Well alright, then. If you like it so much, you’re welcome to stay in our soulscape.”

“No. I will return to my vessel. Your journey is yours alone. I have already negotiated sanctuary with the masters of this place.”

Yoshika blinked.

“Y-you have? When did you do that?”

“While we spoke. You waste much time transforming your feelings to words and back again. You also neglect your surroundings when focused inward.”

Well if that wasn’t ominous...

Yoshika retreated from her soulscape, unceremoniously ejecting the sassy spirit as she did. When she opened her eyes again, she found her friends around her with worried expressions on their faces.

Rika sighed in relief.

“Oh, thank the Kami. Eun-eun, we’ve been trying to wake you guys up for hours!”

It took Yoshika a moment to reorient herself. She had more bodies than she was used to, and it was still jarring to go from her soulscape to physical reality so quickly.

“What’s wrong?”

Lin Xiulan’s eyes widened in surprise.

“You’re still joined? What a fascinating group of young women you are! I could meditate for centuries on what I’ve witnessed today.”

Ja Yun groaned in exasperation, looking up incredulously at the grandmistress.

“With respect, Lady Lin Xiulan, is this really the time?”

Yoshika looked at each of them at the same time.

“Why? What’s going on?”

Somewhere in the depths of her soul, she knew the answer, but she wanted to hide from it for just a moment longer. Lin Xiulan grinned and pointed up, shattering her denial in an instant.

“It looks like at least one of you has crossed a threshold, girls. Bad timing, too—the Awakening Dragon delegates are arriving tomorrow.”

Yoshika sighed and followed Xiulan’s finger up into the sky, where a dark cloud was gathering right above her heads.

“Not again...”