A Pill, A Phoenix, And A Problem

Characters: Tsolmon and Xun Linghao

Leaves were falling. As was the temperature. Nostalgic in some ways, foreign in others. A young man trudged along the roadway, then slid off down a nearby embankment as darkness slowly began to creep over the world. Far in the distance , cityfolk went about their business. Farther still loomed the greater edifices of cultivators, silently performing such errands as suited beings of their stature. "Today's as good a day as any." Tsolmon jiggled the last few bronze coins in his small leather pouch. An odd job here, a day's labor there, a bit of hunting for meat to eat and fur to sell. These had gotten the young refugee this far into the Four Territories with body and soul together. But it couldn't last.

"Mother... Father... you didn't buy me my freedom just to sit around and grub in the dirt like a farmer forever..." The crisp, cold air flowed in and out of Tsolmon's lungs as he carefully stoked a fire with dry kindling, layering in larger timbers as he'd seen other locals doing. "Luxury. To think such huge trees grew in the world. Big enough to keep a fire going all night if you needed to. Not fueled with dry dung and crushed grass, reeking of animal filth." The fire soon crackled happily, driving back the cold a little. But not the quiet. Not the emptiness.

A small stone basin. A dram of liquid mercury, purchased in exchange for some of Tsolmon's less important herbal reagents. A metal legged stand to hold them both. The wind stilled for a moment, and the flames licked at the basin's bottom. "Heat. Like dragon's fire. Mercury. Like molten dragon's blood." Tsolmon looked around at the empty, darkened forest, and found it good. There was nothing auspicious about this place, and so it felt... correct. A blank canvas to test some of the more advanced theories he'd been reading about within his salvaged stash of cultivation documents. "Three and ten strands of spider filament, like the vessels of boiling blood. Paired cowie shells, polished beneath a full moon, like dragon's eyes. "

The blisteringly hot mercury accepted the alchemical donations without complaint, rippling only slightly as Tsolmon carefully lowered them in one by one. The smoke rose, bitter and pungent, making Tsolmon's eyes water as he persevered. "Stir five times, ending at the north. Stir five times, ending at the south. Five for the east. Five for the west. Lift and strike, to the center five times, like the beat of a dragon's heart." Careful strokes. Careful strikes. The name of each classic element, chanted with each motion to do honor to all. "Now for the hard part..." No dragon bone, for the spine of a great beast. But, a piece of vertebra from a giant mammoth of the steppes, this Tsolmon had. A chip of forelimb from the finest of his tribe's horses, kept as a childhood treasure. Now used in place of dragon's horn. A few feathers from the great plains roc, discarded when it stooped upon one of Tsolmon's tribesmen and still stained with horse-lord blood. These, he offered as replacement for dragon scales, and hoped for the best.

"Last... the simplest step. I was never a warrior. Never a champion. But in me is the blood of those who knew no fear. Who strode the world undaunted. Their stories are carved on the world itself." The young tribesman raised a small knife to his forearm, blade gleaming red in the firelight. "All I have are those stories. All I have is my blood. Deeds not my own. Heritage unearned." A quick flash of steel, a whisper-soft slice of flesh, a silent spurt of crimson lifeblood flowing into the mercury, sizzling where the two liquids met and clashed. "But what I have I offer freely, whatever its worth." Tsolmon stared down at the slowly rippling liquid, watching a lazily rolling turbulence begin to stir in its depths of the metal's own accord. "Ancestors, guide my steps."

Exhaling and inhaling in one smooth, continuous motion, Tsolmon knelt before the basin, continuously stoking the fire beneath the stone like a bellows. He'd seen his elders use this technique to sing for hours on end while riding across the endless grasslands, filling their lungs without pause. The flames danced cheerfully, basking in Tsolmon's oxygenated gift and sustaining his alchemical reaction in return.

As the moon rose high into the sky, little wavelets began forming in the mercury's steaming surface, lifting up higher and higher until they broke into a myriad of floating droplets. A searing-hot cloud hovering over the stone bowl, raining down and lifting back up in the same smooth, silent motions. The moon called upon Tsolmon's gathered mercury just as any ocean, tides rolling back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth. Ever upward, ever higher, until at the last they broke free of gravity itself, floating a few feet into the air. A small planet until itself, perfectly spherical and without blemish. Impossibly, a purple light began to glow from within the mercurial sphere, permeating through the opaque, dense metal surrounding it. Tsolmon spoke the words, just as his texts said. "You who exists only as you decree. You who spans heavens and earth, master of all between. You who gives dreams to mortal men, who gives and takes life in service of heaven, whose birth is celebrated by gods and devils and whose death is mourned by sun and moon together... I beseech your might to merge with my own, and bring me closer to your perfection."

With a sharp, precise thrust, Tsolmon plunged his hand into the mercury sphere, flinching slightly as it rippled around his forearm. It was as cold as the depths of a steppe winter, stealing the breath from his lungs and the heat from his blood. Colder, even. Nothing had prepared the young man for this, and it took every scrap of willpower in him to keep from flinching, withdrawing his hand. Gasping with pain and the fear of frostbite, Tsolmon plunged his arm deeper into the mercury, fumbling farther and farther forward. "My arm... my hand... I should have passed all the way through by now... What is this? The pill of Crimson Serpent's Sunfire should leap into my grasp as the mercury expels it, according to these notes..." A chill ran through Tsolmon entirely unrelated to the frost creeping up into his torso, as he shoved his entire shoulder into the small mercurial sphere, fumbling blindly in a space somehow larger than met the naked eye. "What have I done...?"

His whole body felt made of carved polar ice. His fingers reached out blindly, desperately stretching as far as Tsolmon dared into a liquid metal void. The moon glared down pitilessly from above, casting its frigid, stolen light across the scene underneath night-shadowed trees. In that moment, Tsolmon knew true despair. Everything he'd lost came flooding to memory unbidden, the tribe, his parents, his place in the world, meager though it was. He had nothing. He was nothing. Nothing, except for this moment. And the nothing flowed from him, into the silver-flowing orb, pulsing through frozen muscles, crystallized bone, solidified blood and nerve and viscera, out, out, out and further outward still into the bizarre space within Tsolmon's alchemical misadventure.

And his numb fingers closed around something small, hard, and colder yet if such a thing was even possible.

Tsolmon was given no choice in the matter. His hand clenched for some force not his own, and his arm was flung free of the mercury with the force of a charging horse, throwing Tsolmon back across the clearing and into the trunk of a nearby cypress tree. Little green needles cascaded down like snow as high, wispy clouds drifted across the moon, obscuring Tsolmon from its sight. The mercury liquefied again, flowing gently, slowly back into the basin without a sound as if returning to slumber. The fire crackled and dimmed, glowing down to embers and smoke. And as the young wanderer looked at his right hand, shaking off the thin layer of rime ice, he was spellbound by what he saw pinched between index finger and thumb.

This wasn't right. The pill Tsolmon had hoped to brew should be glowing with the light of a noonday sun, vibrating with the barely-caged roar of dragon's on the hunt. A pill to give warriors strength beyond strength, fire of breath and soul alike, and courage to stand toe to toe with the gods themselves. Valuable enough to trade for a few months room and board at a decent way-house, and some proper clothes at least. "What... what are you, pretty thing? What have I created?" The pill had a glassy purplish look to it, surrounded by little dancing motes of light which floated into and out of the pill's shell almost whimsically, like tiny fireflies dipping in and out of a pond's surface. Swirls of blue energy moved slowly within the pill's depths, twisting and turning as they pleased with no pattern Tsolmon could detect. It felt powerful, even to Tsolmon's untrained eye. There was a hunger to the pill, and a passionate... desire which Tsolmon could almost taste on his tongue. It frightened him. Yet it didn't give off an evil aura or demonic miasma. The pill might or might not be safe to consume. But it wouldn't kill.

Probably.

Tsolmon set the pill onto the leather surface of his pack, observing how deeply it pressed into the top flap. Disproportionate for its size, he thought. "Let's see... is there anything in these notes that gives the least clue what you might be?" The sharp-eyed steppe rider flipped through weathered parchment, page after page, scanning the notes of cultivators long dead. So engrossed was Tsolmon in his search, the normally quick-witted man failed to feel the temperature around him rising, little by little. Or to hear the quiet footsteps emerging into the clearing behind him. The voice though... the voice brought Tsolmon up short, wheeling around in panic to see a tall, severe-looking man strolling towards him. A man with... wings?

"And what exactly do you think you're doing, on the very doorstep of the Xun clan? Bold indeed, to practice alchemy out in the open like this. Insulting even, to do so with such a... reckless technique. If I can even call it that." The man's aura filled the clearing, quiet for now but absolutely certain in its power. Tsolmon's mind raced. This was the worst-case scenario, to be found out before he was ready to make his move in the market should his experiment produce unimpressive results, or present himself properly to higher society if he managed something worthy of their attention. Tsolmon had practiced what he might say on meeting one of those greater entities, but in this moment words failed him. "I... I was... Just..." Without thinking, his hand gripped the softly glowing pill tightly, protectively. The tall man raised an eyebrow. *"I can take it from you, you know. It won't be difficult. The winged man looked down at the pile of notes, scattered at Tsolmon's feet. "I probably should take it from you. Uncontrolled sorcerous experimentation is banned for a reason, you know. Even a child should understand that." The man bent to pick up a few loose pieces of parchment. And Tsolmon found his voice at last.

"DON'T! DON'T TOUCH THOSE!" The young man was on his feet, trembling with rage and fear, gripping the ritual knife in his hand tightly for all the good it would do him. The winged man chuckled slightly to himself, standing up and turning to Tsolmon amusedly, without the slightest hint of fear or even concern. "It's... those are all I have. I CAN'T lose them... I just can't..." The tall cultivator looked down at the documents, scanning them quickly. He listened to Tsolmon's words as the boy continued to talk, ignoring what he was saying. But listening closely to the tone. The accent.

He raised a single hand, palm forward, compelling Tsolmon to silence.

"No one speaks like that to me." As Tsolmon began to object to being implied a bumpkin or that he was offering insult, the man cut him off. "No. I mean, no one speaks like THAT. It's not a question of disrespect. The rise and fall of your voice. The way you speak some words flatly, and some deeply. A man of the Territories would do no such thing. And yet... and yet you do speak it." Tsolmon held his breath, the knife trembling. "Your stance. Your build. A life spent on horseback. Your eyes. Your skin. Elegance mixed with savagery." The unknown cultivator offered Tsolmon back his notes, which the young man took with surprise written on his face. "I never expected to meet someone from beyond this land's borders. Less still to see one of them come to me in front of my very home. I find my curiosity... outweighing my sense of duty in this matter."

He pointed one long, graceful finger at the pill clasped in Tsolmon's left hand. "I think we should ascertain exactly what your experimentation has produced, shouldn't you?" The cultivator straightened up, adjusting his garments carefully for a moment. "I am Xun Linghao, scion of that selfsame great Clan whose fortress you are currently nearby. I offer sanctuary there, at least for now. Four walls, a sturdy roof, and a good meal. While you are beneficiary of my hospitality, I would learn more of you as well. And how you came to be in the possession of these... most extraordinary writings." He laughed slightly to himself. "I suppose I can respect a man who takes what he can get, when the opportunity arises."

Tsolmon's breathing slowed, his racing heart still thundering in his ears. His stomach felt like it was falling off a cliff, a fearful emptiness gnawing away at the strength in his limbs. He could feel the other man's qi, filling the forest like a raging inferno even in this seeming calm exchange of words. Tsolmon carefully slid the ritual knife back into its sheath and bowed as he'd seen other lower-caste individuals doing in the market. The motion was clumsy, unpracticed, and brought the corner of Linghao's mouth up slightly in the ghost of an amused smile. "I... Tsolmon... this one humbly accepts your hospitality, sir Xun Linghao. I will be pleased to stay among your household and learn what I might."

This time, Linghao did laugh aloud. "What a casual people you descend from, Tsolmon the Reckless. Were we at court, I'd have expected at least another five or ten minutes of pleasantries in return for my tolerance of your existence. And at least a few dozen kowtows before my feet." As Tsolmon flinched, beginning to crouch down, Linghao waved his hand. "Spare me. You can apologize for your impertinence by... telling me about your homeland, on the way back to my estate. Ceremony is the punishment delivered by old men with too much time on their hands."

The two men walked together, one with a leather backpack stuffed with magic and a mouth stuffed with stories, the other with open wings and open ears, drinking in tales of distant lands. And the moon emerged from the clouds once more, peacefully shining over an empty wood.