Alice

In the quiet moments, Alice would wonder if her new life was a strange dream that had gone on for too long. But if there was ever any doubt that Alice had left earth behind and now lived on a different plane entirely, it was not only the light, the heat, the whispers of the Story that spun from every nook and cranny of the world, but also that persistent ache in her chest when she heard it.

Qi was not alive - not according to the maxims spouted off by the disciples she surrounded herself with or by their masters. When she stood before the Skyforge in all its glory and heard the old, aggrieved Stories from the silkworms and felt that remaining sense of pain behind her ribs, that was hard to believe.

"Is the Skyforge naturally formed?" Alice asked Fairy Guan as they walked along the Skybound Path towards Sky Peak, slowly but surely.

Fairy Guan gave that charming, tinkling laugh. "Of course not, my dear disciple. You're young so I must educate you on the way of things. Do you know where we are?"

"In Tianbei Valley, in the Middle Continent!" Feiyan answered, as quickly as she could, undoubtedly trying to score as many easy points as possible.

"But where is the Middle Continent?"

Feiyan didn't respond this time.

"The world," said Kanhu, as if it were the most obvious thing. "This is the world that we live in."

There was a touch of steel in Fairy Guan's smile. "We live in a realm without a name - or one that rejects the names we've called out to it. From the immortals diving down from high, this is a sure sign that we live in what is known as a Lower Realm. Somewhere like this, a beauty like the Skyforge could only be made by human hands."

The touch of steel was joined by a flash of disappointment as Fairy Guan strode through the moonlit streets, slightly behind them. “There are many interpretations of the universe - none of which are perfect analogies, none of which I fully accept.” The Fairy’s eyebrows lifted with the corners of her lips. “I do, however, have a favorite.”

Alice hadn’t ventured past Sword Peak in any of her adventures around Tianbei, but as they drew closer to the Skyforge, there were fewer and fewer buildings. Northern Tianbei was already suburban in nature, but here, only a mile or two from the entrance of Earth Peak, there were suddenly farmhouses and fields. There was a touch of soot in the air, courtesy of Sky Peak’s billowing plumes of grey smoke - ash and dust both.

“The worlds are a grove,” Fairy Guan began. “Born from the cultivation of different seeds, we have trees young and old - great trees that cast shade over many worlds that are the Starfields far above us and small saplings like our world, bereft of a name.”

Alice could see it. Uncle Jiang had referred to earth as a ‘seed world’.

“What is required for a tree to grow?” Alice asked.

Fairy Guan shrugged, almost languidly. “It’s been many generations and no one has seemed to figure that out around here. I don’t know if a realm can advance. We could be doomed from birth. After all, it is said that a sect never grows better - better cultivators just go on to better sects.” She paused. “Did you know, before you were even born, there was indeed a better sect on this continent.”

“A better sect than the Ascending Sky?” Alice asked, knowing what sect that might have been.

Fairy Guan nodded. “Many of the older cultivators you’ll meet have had friends and enemies both from the Falling Leaves.”

“My sister says the Falling Leaves were all crooks and thieves and they deserved to die,” said Feiyan.

“Zhu Luoli has few kind words for anyone she knows is better than her,” said Fairy Guan, smiling. “And many swords for those who she considers worse.” She gave Feiyan a pat on the head.

Feiyan pouted.

“What happened to the sect?” asked Alice, who already knew the story, but didn’t know what the world thought of it.

Fairy Guan frowned, her eyebrows pinching slightly. “That is the topic of much speculation, so I can only give my own.”

She didn’t speak for a while, and they continued to walk. The air was heavier now, and damper.

Fairy Guan stopped suddenly.

“In previous dynasties, the records of ascension were well kept and there were many more. Our Ascending Sky has had many immortals from the era when Dongjing was, indeed, the eastern capital. Around the times of turmoil, just over sixty generations ago, a new sect appeared to challenge the old ones - this was the Falling Leaves. The first grievance that the Great Sects have against the Falling Leaves begins with one name - one name you must never repeat until you understand how to shroud yourself from the wrath of the skies. Until something defines you like the swing of the-”

SeverCutSlice The Sword Defines Me.

“Yang Xiaoyun.”

The Silkworms hissed and for a moment, Alice thought she could smell ozone, but then there was nothing. And then Alice remembered suddenly the lines of descent that Uncle Jiang mentioned and the five statues in the Falling Leaves, one of which had been smashed.

“What’s so bad about saying-” Kanhu started, having noticed nothing at all, but the suddenly furious glare of Fairy Guan cut him off.

“I speak these words to you,” she said, unmoving, “because you are now outer disciples of the Ascending Sky and there are some things in the world you must know. Not every name, not every word, can be repeated idly.”

In the moonlit streets, for just a moment, Fairy Guan looked more than just human.

“I confess to being a lover of history - like most cultivators,” she whispered, “because when you hear a story, there will always be something you can learn from them. You are my disciples and my disciples will not be unprepared.”

She paused. “The Falling Leaves left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth because they were upstarts who challenged the order of things at the turning of the throne. They had the unfortunate habit of poaching students who had not been pledged to them. The name you have just heard belonged to the inheriting disciple of the Sect Master from the continent’s oldest sect - the Rolling Clouds in Qiaoxin. Their lost disciple’s name is one of the many you must not speak. The Weaver, the General, the Warrior Poet, the Shark, they are all Venerates in the skies above. They are proof that even small little minnows like ourselves can ascend to the greatest of heights.”

Fairy Guan smiled, but she didn’t mean to - not from the way her lips twisted. “It is said when you have that great debate with the Sky from our lower realm, it will be the Venerates of our lowly realm who will oppose you. They are the will of Heaven. They are almighty. Thusly, I have named those who have murdered my master. Perhaps some venerate who had a particularly difficult tribulation has already taken vengeance on that damned sect on her behalf.”

“Almighty, but not unbeatable, then” said Alice, quietly. She felt the beginning of rebellion in the pit of her stomach. Her chest began to ache.

“Only because Heavenly Tribulation is a duel against an idea rather than an actual Venerate,” said Fairy Guan.

The whispers from the Silkworms grew louder.

“Stop that,” said the Fairy. “What you lack most, Chow Mulan, is self-control.”

Alice turned towards the Skyforge up ahead.

“Turning your head from your master implies that you are angry. Your cultivation will go nowhere if you don’t learn to control your emotions.”

Alice nodded, looking at her feet, at the thin layer of soot covering the ground. They had continued walking. But she didn’t agree with Fairy Guan. Uncle Jiang had been far younger than the Fairy when he’d completed his ascension. Who was she to say that she was Alice’s master?

The fairy had sent David on a wild goose chase to deliver a package that could be left at the Song Mountain Sect’s doorstep in minutes if one of the elders could be bothered to leave the sect. Just because the Widow of the Valley wasn’t nearly as talented-

“Just because I can’t read your thoughts doesn’t mean I don’t know what you’re thinking,” said Fairy Guan, more softly.

Alice blushed. Kanhu, Feiyan and Qitai were all trying to make as little noise as possible, it seemed - their walking had quieted down dramatically and they stared ahead resolutely. They seemed to realize there was something intensely private about this lecture.

“A cultivator should never give undue respect to those who came before her, but she should also never show no respect at all. That is the way to ruin,” said Fairy Guan. “I’ve been alive for very long, and it can be argued that I surpassed my master many years before her last words.”

Alice couldn’t keep the frown off her face.

“But as a girl, I was very much like you. This is why you dislike me.”

“I don’t-”

“Of course you do,” said Fairy Guan. “You see yourself in me, but you’ve made the assumption that the world has broken me down, made me a servant to the memories of those who came before. And maybe you’re right, in some respects.”

Alice, of course, couldn’t say that she simply didn’t respect Fairy Guan because she’d already met an immortal who was more talented and said nothing to her about her attitude.

“But, no matter, you will learn with time.”

They stood at the edge of Sky Peak - that flat, open faced volcano that was just a bit taller than Earth Peak and so much more industrial than the desolate Sword Peak.

The visible side of Sky Peak was the Skyforge. It was not like a conventional forge, as Alice would expect. When she thought of a forge, she thought of dwarves and rings and swords set beneath a mountain. She didn’t expect pools of lava on the side of the mountain, strategically set in place to form the eight trigrams, even though in hindsight, she wasn’t sure what its form could possibly be other than that symbol for yin and yang and the eight aspects represented as lines around it.

The central pool was a huge circle, with yin filled in by the dark rock of the mountain and yang as the cooling red magma of the mountain. Surrounding it on eight sides were sets of three lines - filled or empty. The filled lines were beds of lava in perfect rectangles at least thirty feet wide and three feet long. The unfilled lines were two sections a third the width of the filled lines, with a gap in the center to split the line into three parts equidistant.

Each of the sets of trigrams surrounding the central pool were a different configuration of filled and unfilled. Alice counted off the configurations clockwise from the south, “heaven, wind, water, mountain, earth, thunder, fire, valley”.

“Correct,” said Fairy Guan. “Today, we will be forging at tui, the aspect of the valley, which points south-east.”

The configuration was filled, filled, empty.

Fairy Guan withdrew the compass from her robes yet again. “Observe. This is a compass made of copper, with its needle made of iron. We will form the base of the compass within the pools at tui and the needle in the pool of yang.”

“The pool of yang?” asked Qitai.

Fairy Guan pointed at the central pool.

“But where are we getting the metal from?” protested Feiyan. “Are we going to generate it with our qi?”

Everyone stared at her. Alice couldn’t remember the last time someone asked something that stupid.

“We’ll be getting supplies from within Sky Peak,” Fairy Guan finally said after the question hung in the air for another moment. “This is what can be considered quite an esoteric exercise,” she continued, “but one that I’ve put every single outer disciple of this sect through.”

“What about-”

“When he returns from his sect duties, I’ll find some time with Daoist Ji to teach him, one-on-one,” said Fairy Guan.

She gave Alice the sort of reassuring smile that Alice heavily misliked.