Sky Pride

Tian woke up in darkness and pain. This, he reckoned, was a good thing. It meant he was still alive. The last thing he remembered was pulling off the tourniquets, then whiting out from the sudden agony. He craned his neck down. Grandpa had very carefully directed him in how to splice an artery so that the blood was pumped into Liren, did a full circuit through her, and entered his body again on the other side of the cut.

Grandpa had been muttering something about “Severe oxygen deprivation on top of toxic shock, not to mention rejection, anaphylaxis…” He had said a lot of things, using words that weren’t in Tian's medical books. In fact, he was pretty sure a lot of them weren’t even in the language of the Broadsky Kingdom. Well, whatever.

He felt the craziest laugh bubbling up from his chest. It escaped from his mouth in happy giggles, he felt flushed with joy.

“See, Grandpa? It all worked out.”

The only sound in the cave was his breathing, and the creaking of stone underground.

“Grandpa?”

There was an awkward pat on his shoulder from an old hand.

“Did… did you use up all your energy?”

Silence. Again.

“For how long? Weeks? Years?”

There was no reply. Tian gasped and clutched his chest. The joy extinguished, like a candle falling into a pond. Losing Grandpa, even if it was temporary, made his heart ache. All the pains in his body magnified and multiplied, with a crushing loneliness falling down on him.

He felt Hong move underneath him. She was breathing. The thorns had vanished. He risked a peek at her back. It was still a gory hellscape, but the thorns were gone, and the bleeding had stopped. It didn’t look as bad as it had before. He would have to wash her to figure out what damage was left. First things first though. Disconnecting their bodies. Grandpa must be keeping his heart in sync even now. Every second extending the silent time by who knows how long.

Tian groped around trying to find his knife. At some point it had been flung some five feet away. This presented certain immediate challenges, but he was not without means. Things being too far away had a simple answer. Rope dart. He reached for his dart and -

And it wasn’t there. It was on the ground. The dart was shattered, bashed apart by him in his frantic efforts to dig a tub to hold Liren. The rope still seemed okay. Battered, perhaps. There was visible damage, but it was probably fixable. The dart itself, though, was simply gone. Broken into pieces and scattered across the cave floor.

The well of grief deepened. The rope dart had been with him for years. Such important years. It had accompanied him through life and death battles, and all the peaceful moments when its presence meant reassurance, and enough safety to let him relax. It represented his bond with Sister Li, the crafter who made it. She was chronically cranky, probably because she was chronically exhausted, but she had always been honest with him. Fair to him. She did her best for him. And he broke the rope dart she had made for him.

She would probably understand. It didn’t make him feel any better. He loved his rope dart. He didn’t see a need to give it a pet name or humanize it, the way some sword or saber users did with their blades. It was just his rope dart. Something he used with all the thoughtless comfort of his hand. And he broke it in a desperate moment.

He lay in his pain for a few minutes, then started breathing through it. He reminded himself that it was an external object, something that he had made with his first big award of merits. He hadn’t spent a single spirit crystal for it. It had served its purpose for years, and its sacrifice helped to save a comrade’s life. Wasn’t that worthwhile? Wasn’t that a worthy existence?

But it was his. His reliance. Tian felt fury washing through his veins, red hot, blinding. He would kill every single person responsible for this. The Black Acacia daoist, whoever put the money on their heads, the heretics, all of them! All of them!

The fury couldn’t keep him buoyed long. The heat collapsed, and all the pain rushed back in.

Worthy or not, losing the rope dart still hurt. He still hurt. But he had other things to do. He could feel his body was still broken in… too many places. His hips, in particular, were very clear that standing up wasn’t going to be a thing that happened any time soon. He had other knives. Maybe not as well suited as what he used before, but needs must. He checked his storage ring and pulled out a kitchen cleaver.

It was amazing the detail work you could do with the front point of the blade. Even more amazing was how the blunt looking knife was refined to an edge so thin, you could roll a radish out like paper. He had seen a mortal doing it outside a restaurant. A long ribbon of radish, so thin you could see the light shining through it, spooling out against the sharp edge of a kitchen knife, falling in an unbroken stream into a basin of water at the cook’s feet. Tian had insisted they go in and eat there, and had firmly instructed Hong to tip well.

The food had been mediocre. But the shaved radish was no less mysterious or wonderful for all that.

He felt ghostly hands settle over his, subtly guiding his hands… away from the knife and directly towards the filthy tournequites.

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“I mean. I hadn’t forgotten them. Obviously I was going to tie things off. And get the suturing needle out and threaded first. And clean the wound site. Obviously.”

Grandpa remained silent, but Tian couldn’t help feeling that the silence was very loud.

He settled down. He hurt. Everything ached. He was so tired, he briefly contemplated using needles to keep his eyelids open. But this really couldn’t wait. He had been hurt and tired before. Didn’t die then. Wouldn’t die now. He mentally made a list of what he would need. Visualized every step of the operation. Carefully laid out everything as best he could given the circumstances, then visualized the operation once again.

Sometimes, being a cultivator was useful in the oddest ways. Others might find such detailed visualization hard. It was just a normal thing for Tian. Hong would probably say the same thing. Visualization meditation was just normal. This was… not exactly normal, but it was made up of normal components, lots of things he was used to, so if he just focused on the normal bits in isolation, the not-normal would vanish. And once it was gone, was there really anything here to be scared about? Of course not.

Grandpa guided his hands again. They didn’t lose too much blood, comparatively. All things considered. And they should be healthy enough to fight off any infections that got in during the surgery. He could feel vital energy flowing through his meridians without pain. He could use the Demon Pulling art if he needed to. Probably. They would be fine.

Tian looked at himself, then Hong. His trousers had been cut away so that he could do the surgery. What remained of his robes would need to be burned with Steel Burning Powder, as they weren’t fit to be buried and no normal fire could destroy the foulness on them. Hong’s robes, what was left of them, were trapped under her body. From what he could see, they were in even worse state than his. They both still had loincloths on, but the amount of diabolical filth that permeated them made the strongest case yet for nudism as a hygienic necessity.

Which was another problem. He didn’t care about being naked. He didn’t care about being seen naked. It wasn’t that he didn’t know what shame was, it was just that it wasn’t something he connected to his body. He kept dressed because it was the rules, and people didn’t like it if you were naked. He took pains to look tidy, because people responded better if you were well groomed, and his brothers had insisted. Brother Fu was particularly insistent. Besides, it was the sect rules. So that was that.

It was different for other people. Even in the hospital, with the crash of wounded in urgent need of care, they kept him from seeing the women without their clothes on. Whenever possible, they were treated by female doctors, and handled by female orderlies. It wasn’t always possible, of course, but exceptions were rare.

Liren hadn’t been casual about skin even before she started darkening and shooting up in height. She always dressed properly. Baths were taken separately. Even when she was teaching him to swim, she kept her underrobes on. Now she was naked in front of him. Worse, he was going to be washing her down and drying her too, because he couldn’t leave her filthy like that without inviting endless sickness into her body.

He had once heard someone say that necessity needed no apologies and made no excuses, but the circumstances that made things necessary often did. It was Brother Fu who had told him that sometimes you had to apologize even if you didn’t think you did anything wrong. Tian was pretty sure he couldn’t be blamed for the circumstances, but he still said, “Sorry, Sis’,” and pulled out a washcloth and a canteen. Soap would come after the rinse. He stretched his hand out and paused.

He looked very nearly as gory as she did.

“Well. I’ll wash myself first. Sorry again, Sis’, but if I don’t, I really do think I’d just make you dirtier, not cleaner.”

Hong woke up some time after sunlight started shining through the hole in the roof. Tian had done the best he could, and had even dragged her out of the shallow basin he had dug for her. That was an agonizing hour. But now she was clean, dry, and wrapped in a warm blanket. He had even slipped a well fluffed pillow under her head.

“I expected more fire. And demons. This seems quiet, for Hell. Am I going to Judge Yan, then Hell? I suppose that is the proper order of things.”

Her voice startled Tian awake. He wasn’t sure when he dropped off to sleep. He had been cultivating, and just drifted off.

“If this is Hell, it would explain a lot. But I’m pretty sure we are still in the Broadsky Kingdom. Good news, probably- we both lived.” Tian tried to put some humor in his voice, and didn’t particularly succeed.

“Ah. I was…”

“Yeah.” Tian nodded. He suddenly felt awkward. How, exactly, did you thank a sister for being willing to trade her life for yours? Silently noting it in his heart didn’t seem-

“You did something to save me, didn’t you?

“I was third in line after Elder Rui and the Treasure Weighing Magistrate, but yes.”

Tian very roughly explained what he had done, casually leaving out Grandpa and praying that Hong didn’t know enough about medicine to know that should have killed her a dozen times over. 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

“That’s flat out impossible. That should have killed me in a dozen different ways. You can’t just swap blood between people, for one thing. It kills ‘em. I know, because we found records of heretics that tried it and they never pulled it off. And they tried a lot.”

Tian silently cursed, then said “They are incompetent scumbags whose physique is as fragile as their morals. You are very robust. The proof is that you are still alive.”

“And you, Brother?”

“I, too, am alive.” He nodded. “Normally I would ask about brain damage, but we have met a chatty ghost so it’s not a crazy question.”

“Oh good, your sense of humor survived the fall too.” She muttered. Silence fell again.

“I am so glad you survived the fall.” Her voice was muffled.

“My sister traded her life for mine. How could I lose it carelessly?” Tian smiled in the dark. Liren snorted, and Tian continued. “I’m glad you said something. I had no idea how to bring it up.”

“What’s there to discuss?” Her voice was still muffled, and he could see her head turn away in the shadows.

“I hope a lot of things. We aren’t leaving this cave for a while, and it will be good to have something to chat about. I don’t know about you, but I’ve got enough broken bones to keep me on bed rest for a while.”

Tian stifled the oddest urge to giggle. He could feel the laughter swishing around in him. He stifled it. Didn’t seem like the right moment for a giggle.

“I’m in similar shape. I’m sure I was hurt worse at some point, but damned if I can think of when. Healing first, facing the world later.” Her voice got less muffled, and took on a measured tone. “There is one topic of conversation that I think needs discussing immediately, however.”

“Yes?”

“Brother Zihao? Where the fuck are my clothes?”