Claddings of Light : Book 12 of Painting the Mists

by Patrick Laplante

Silver Fish forgot the happy stories. Any joy he’d once felt at hearing them drained away. Now, he only had a mind for tales of horror and vengeance. The creatures around him morphed and became nightmarish. The seas that hid them in darkness deepened. All around him, he heard screams, and he reveled in them.

  Emotion. They were the key to stories, Master West Sea had told him. It wasn’t just about structure. No one wanted to hear about a tailor who spent his life working in a pleasant shop. They wanted to hear about the injustices he’d suffered, his struggles, and his despair. They wanted to hear about trampled men rising up and small men achieving vengeance. Emotions were the heart of it all, and they gave their stories power. That was why, despite them losing, despite their constantly retreating, Silver Fish grew in strength. Even as his wounds accumulated, he didn’t stop. Even as Cao Wenluan struck a lucky blow, and destruction qi rampaged through his veins, bringing him to his knees, clutching at his anchor, and struggling to lift it back up again, his power grew.

  “It’s over,” Cao Wenluan said, kicking Silver Fish’s limp body over onto its back.

  “It’s not over till I’m dead,” Silver Fish said with a glare.

  “Have it your way, then,” Cao Wenluan said, hefting his blade. He pulled it back, but before he could swing it down, he paused and frowned. Then he jumped backward as a massive crater appeared. A half-moon shape caved in and swallowed a large chunk of Cao Wenluan’s forces, sparing only the demons that were fighting and retreating.

  A blur of gold and black jumped out of the pit and attacked Cao Wenluan while he was prone in midair. They exchanged a series of blows, with neither of them the victor. And then another woman jumped out and joined Serrendil, muscular and tattooed. She wielded curved blades that, though not executing any specific technique, were graceful, practiced, and fluid.

  Out of the cave-in crawled lamia. Half men, half snake. An army of men and women wielding twin sabers like the first did. They were accompanied by creations of stone and sand that spread out toward the other portions of the battlefield and joined the defending army. It wasn’t long before Cao Wenluan was forced to retreat, and Serrendil and the newcomer flew over to Silver Fish. He could tell by her markings and her scales which clan she hailed from: the Runebound Python Clan.

  Silver Fish pushed himself up, despite the weight of his wounds. “Well met,” he said. “Thank you for your timely assistance.”

  “We have come because of the agreement,” the woman said. “Where is your chieftain?”

  “Back in the tree,” Silver Fish said.

  “Take me to her,” the woman said. “She requires our aid.” She revealed a brown melon that glowed with earthly energy.

  “And both of ours,” Silver Fish said to Serrendil. “Take me there?”

  “Fine,” Serrendil said. “Any news from my clansmen?”

  “I haven’t heard anything,” Silver Fish said. And then he noticed an incoming connection. A shift in space as a tunnel pierced through from a far-off location. In the only open spot in the city battlefield, the one Clever Dusk had said to keep vacant—a massive portal appeared. Demons began flowing out of it. Initiates all. Demons of all kinds wearing human clothes, refugees from the human lands. And with them came the Golden Dragons, the Clockwork Clan of old. Shneraz grinned when he saw Serrendil.

  In that moment, the woman who called herself Dark Requiem changed. Whereas before, she’d been a reluctant participant, a sympathizer, she was now fully joined to their cause. And when the last of them stepped through, including Mi Fei, Xiao Bai, Huxian, and Cha Ming, Silver Fish finally felt like they had a fighting chance.

  Hurry, Clever Dusk sent to him. Take Serrendil. Take the python. Take Cha Ming.

  “Silver Fish,” Cha Ming said, tossing him a bottle of pills. “You look like hell.”

  “We all feel like hell,” Silver Fish said, swallowing the pills without hesitation. Heat filled his body. Energy filled his limbs. He’d been dying, he realized. He’d just been too numb to feel it.

  “Then let’s see how the enemy takes this,” Cha Ming said. A vestment of light appeared behind him, a cloak of shimmering flame that was blinding to all those who looked upon it. Silver Fish could swear he saw a phoenix appear, but he couldn’t make out any specifics. And above it appeared a roaring fire, a beacon in the darkness.

  At first, Silver Fish felt nothing. A small drop in the bucket holding his suffering. And then, a heaviness fell upon them. The mood of their combatants dropped as the flame grew larger, sucking positive emotions away from the battlefield. It didn’t affect the demons much, who were desperate—they’d been losing the war since before it started. The flames did affect the aggressors, however. Their morale collapsed in an instant.

  The defenders began to rout the enemy as their lines broke. All the pain and suffering the demons had felt over the previous days struck them in a single instant. And unlike the demons, they hadn’t had time to build a tolerance to these emotions. It was a crippling blow to their subconscious, and the demon commanders were only too happy to take advantage of it.

  Cha Ming stood there, struggling as he held the flame. He only did so for about thirty seconds, until finally, he was forced to let it go, as his qi reserves were fully depleted. “Hopefully that bought us a little more time,” he said. “It’s nice to see you, Serrendil. I heard you were dead.”

  “I nearly was,” Serrendil said. “Shall we?”

  “Let’s,” Cha Ming said. He walked over to a door Silver Fish hadn’t noticed. It opened up straight into the heart of the Tree of Life. Clever Dusk had even planned for this. “Coming?”

  “Let me just take something out of my eye,” Silver Fish said. He rubbed at it, and his hand came away with a single glistening black tear. How long had it been since he’d last cried? Months, at least.

  Cha Ming eyed the curious formation as it glowed with unfamiliar demonic energy. Its lines were not of ink or stone, but of the pulsing lifeblood of the Tree of Life. It led all the way up the trunk and into the branches, connecting everything to the starry sky.

  Near the center of the tree sat five groups. There were four smaller ones, each with a representative member of their clans and fruits containing massive amounts of energy that fed into the Tree of Life’s core. As for the rest of them, they consisted of the inkborn, including Silver Fish, Serrendil, Graceful Twilight, and Clever Dusk and her clansmen. They added concentrated powers of ink into the demonic water qi channeled by the elders in their group.

  Some of them even went so far as to let their blood trickle out in a continuous stream. It poured into the central pillar, complementing the other five elements. Together, the energy traveled all the way up the branches and all the way down into the inky well aquifer below.

  “It’s time,” Clever Dusk said. “We need linking runes to connect it all. Runes of destruction to deny our places of power and runes of creation to open the way.”

  “No guarantees,” Cha Ming said. He began to paint.

  The larger talisman brush flowed along the wooden ground, tracing intricate lines between the different groups. He painted runes of destruction and creation simultaneously, knowing that one wouldn’t do without the other. He was forming a set of instructions that were spelled out by Clever Dusk. That simplified things, for the instructions he painted worried him.

  Fortunately, Clever Dusk knew what he had to do. Different sections of the tree glowed to guide him. It didn’t take him long or much energy to do as she required, for the bulk of the work had already been completed by her and the Star-Eye Clan. Once he finished, the core of the tree glowed, and the earth began to shake. Their connection to the tree broke, and the four fruits disintegrated. Then, as instructed, the Tree of Life also burst apart into millions of motes of light. All the way from the roots to the starry leaves. The elders and the inkborn were left floating there above the besieged city.

  This was only the first set of instructions, Cha Ming knew. He looked to the east and saw the Five Fire Moun
tain Range. All five mountains erupted, sending luminous clouds into the sky. Five-colored energy flowed toward them through ley lines in the earth, pouring into the starry cloud that was all that remained of the Tree of Life.

  The earth trembled, and the ground shook. To the north, mountains collapsed. The ancestral home of the Clockwork Clan and their pocket dimensions full of dragon metals disintegrated. The hidden labyrinths of the Runebound Python Clan, which no one had even known existed until Serrendil discovered them, collapsed. Intermixed radiant metal and sacred sand flowed through their own ley lines and joined the mixed cloud of starlight and iridescent fire.

  Finally, a massive network of black lines spread out from the central swirl of energy. They connected every inky well, large or small, to the main aquifer. They cut off just short of the Burning Lake Prefecture, which was apparently a separate entity from this demonic confluence.

  The remaining inky wells, the ones not denied by Silver Fish and not consumed by the enemy, were instantly drained of energy. The demons, sensing what would happen, had fled with their investiture-realm champions. They migrated toward the remains of Stargazer City, as did every demon in all the demon lands. The reason? It soon became obvious when the aquifer itself disintegrated, the last inky well in this wretched place. It become a swirl of inky energy that fed into the five-colored whole.

  A massive formation appeared where the Tree of Life had once stood, encompassing the many buildings in Stargazer City. A massive gateway appeared in the sky, a door leading to a great starry road that led to heavens knew where. Once it appeared, the demons began to trickle through it. They didn’t hesitate. There was nowhere else to run, for the humans were here to kill them.

  If that were all, it wouldn’t have stopped the human army in its tracks. But then a massive horde of demons rushed at them from behind. They broke the human lines, forming small rivers in the flow of battle for bestial and monstrous demons to charge through, out of the demon lands and into the starry portal.

  Their numbers seemed endless. Cha Ming couldn’t count them. He could only sense a certain restriction. A time counter that, once exhausted, would result in the closure of the portal. There was a limit to how many could enter and the time it could remain open. Not only did the portal need to take them all in, it also needed to let them out. As for where it went, he knew not.

  This continued for minutes until finally, Cao Wenluan mobilized their forces, using his aura to press the attack. They couldn’t stop the flood, but neither could the crush of bodies harm them in any significant way. He could tell that they were losing. What they’d come to gain was disappearing. He pushed for vengeance against those who had wronged him and stolen his prize.

  Cha Ming would have joined the battle, but he was spent. He’d exhausted himself completely in fighting the prefecture lords, summoning a single flame, and painting the formation instructions inside the Tree of Life. He could only watch from above as others fought and bled and died.

  It was the same for the inkborn, who seemed paler than before. Their blood essence was exhausted and would take time to recover. Below, elders, whether monkeys, phoenixes, dragons, or serpents, fought for every second, every minute they could buy. Every moment that passed meant thousands of demons would survive this disaster.

  Huxian was down there, alongside his friends. Gua and Miyue formed a team, as did Lei Jiang and Mr. Mountain. A massive poisonous swamp beat back the enemy while storm clouds struck troops and suppressed gravity and stone. Bifang, the newest addition, had found a willing ally in the reliable Silverwing. He embodied the wind and carried her seven-colored crackling flames to the far reaches of the battlefield.

  Huxian’s Bagua fox was a force to be reckoned with. A massive winged projection of the four-tailed fox rampaged, its burning eyes searing all nearby enemies. Two shadows hinted at two new tails that he would gain when he eventually made his breakthrough into the investiture realm. Pale armor was beginning to form around the fox as well, as with every demon that trickled through, his quest completion rate inched up, feeding increasing amounts of demonic power into his body.

  There were others that Cha Ming knew. A few monkey elders he’d come to know, like Watchful Iris and the original chieftain of Stargazer City. Shneraz was down there as well, as was the older lady, Vereniz, and the surly Hershah. Now fed with dragon metals, these venerable elders were unstoppable. Their demon weapons were sharp, and their demon armor much better built than their Monkey Clan counterparts.

  There was the Iridescent Clan. He had no love for most of the Iridescent Clan, but he owed many of them so much. The First Feather was there, sword in hand, bright flames searing away all defenses. Iridescent Wonder’s flame struck awe into the hearts of men, and upon seeing it, they would fall to their knees and beg for forgiveness, which Iridescent Charity granted them with a burning death.

  The Runebound Clan was a new appearance. He’d never seen them fight before, though he did find them interesting. They were graceful combatants, and they used not only their strong bodies and skill at arms but golems and formations. Their formations were simple, yet effective. He sensed a hint of something from the way they worked, similar to iridescence, but different.

  It wasn’t just the old that fought either. New parents fought to keep the human invaders away from their adolescent children. Monkeys, dragons, phoenixes, and snakes took up arms, holding the line as best they could. Even the geniuses of every clan were present. That included all those who’d participated in the Trial by Ancestral Fire. Iridescent Virtue led the charge, crushing countless opponents with his cauldron while Iridescent Tempest tried desperately to pull him back, so he wasn’t overwhelmed by the advancing human army.

  Unfortunately, they had a time limit. Minutes passed, then hours. Finally, Cha Ming saw the telltale signs of crumbling at the portal formation’s edges. Their defensive encirclement, which had originally been five kilometers in diameter, was now barely larger than the two-kilometer gateway. It was time to go now. Time for their main forces to retreat. They started with the weakest and proceeded to the strongest.

  “We need to go,” Clever Dusk said, pulling Cha Ming by the robe. She brought him to where the others were waiting, and together, they stepped into the circle and onto the starry road. One moment, they were on the ground, and the next, they were on a massive transparent bridge of starlight.

  The bridge was vast and mighty. It led to a network of roads that stretched out across the six continents. Cha Ming could see them all from this vantage point. Five smaller continents surrounding one larger central one, with a massive black ocean in the middle. A huge road ran along the central ocean’s edges. Main arteries went in the direction of the five continents, and smaller branches connected them to smaller places like these ones. Every place on the continent was well connected.

  Their troops trickled in, starting with the weakest, and then the younger generation of geniuses. Finally, Huxian and his friends, and finally, the elders came. And then the gateway closed, cutting them off from the now-devastated demon lands. All the inky wells were gone. Demons would no longer be born there, for all their energy sources had been sacrificed to facilitate the transfer of so many.

  “It is done,” Clever Dusk said sadly. “We have won.”

  “This doesn’t feel like victory to me,” Cha Ming said. “We survived, but in the end, we retreated.”

  “The alternative was dying,” Clever Dusk said. “A journey of vengeance and misery.”

  “It’s not over yet,” Cha Ming said. “Cao Wenluan… he’ll grow from this. I can see the webs spinning and rearranging. Karma realigning.” Then he frowned. “Where’s Silver Fish?”

  “He left,” Serrendil said, walking up to them. “Chose to stay behind and give Cao Wenluan a hard time.”

  “He’s just one man,” Cha Ming said.

  “One man without anything or anyone pinning him down,” Serrendil said. “Seems like a big enough threat to me.”

  “If there’s
anyone who can survive down there, it’s Silver Fish,” Clever Dusk reassured him.

  Cha Ming wasn’t so sure about that, but they were already up here, and there was no way back.

  “Where to now, fearless leader?” Cha Ming asked.

  “Wherever we wish to go,” Clever Dusk said, then walked away.

  Cha Ming approached Huxian, who was sitting on the ground, licking his wounds. “Thanks,” Cha Ming said. “I think I would have done something really stupid if you weren’t there to help me.”

  The fox grinned. “That’s what brothers are for, isn’t it? You’d do the same for me, right?”

  “In a heartbeat,” Cha Ming said. “Though I doubt I’d be as dramatic.”

  “It’s a gift,” Huxian said. Then his eyes flickered to Mi Fei and Xiao Bai, who’d joined the exodus leading away from their arrival point. “You talk to her yet?”

  “I’m not sure if anything I say will be the right thing,” Cha Ming said.

  “I’d say anything is good,” Huxian said. “Anything to help her forget what happened.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Cha Ming said. “I’m just scared I’ll frighten her away.”

  Huxian shrugged. “If she runs, you’ll find her again. If it’s meant to be.”

  Cha Ming nodded. “You’ve changed.”

  “We all have to grow up eventually,” Huxian said.

  Cha Ming rolled his eyes. “You’re not done yet. Not by a long shot. And neither am I, for that matter.” They rose and joined the rest, the tens of millions who’d made their escape. Most of those were the bestial demons, confused and guided by their initiates.

  Together, they crossed the ocean separating their southwestern island and the mainland, joining the great circle that connected everything. The central Inkwell Continent.

  Epilogue

  They headed north, walking on foot across the starry road. Every step they took here equated tens of thousands in the world below. They crossed jungles and forests and plains and cities, and occasionally, they came upon a rich and accepting demon land. Thousands of demons would break off every time from the main group, lessening the burden of their travels, reducing the strain on their limited food stores.