Actually— she blinked. On second thought, why was there a meadow around them? It was nice, not to have to deal with the snow, but the entire rest of the forest had been buried beneath the heavens’ bequeathment. The whole of the Dragonspine range, even, so why this place was so strangely free of it was…

She pulled out a slip of paper, and— acting on a hunch— scrawled down a few small runes. Ripping the makeshift talisman in two, a faint golden light drifted off, barely visible beneath the fire’s radiance— turning to motes of dust and catching not on the wind but thecurrents of the qi around them… and, in its glowing lights, like fireflies, adumbrating the shape of a formation.

The moment she made the connection, she felt a little stupid. Of course the ancient, weather-worn statues were part of some sort of formation. What formation, though, eluded her— she had no idea how it’d managed to stay active for so long, or how it managed the weather around them, or…

She stood, and walked over to the nearest little pylon. It didn’t look like a formation— which was why she’d discarded the idea in the first place. No special stone had been used in its construction; it’d been built with just the same rocky dark-gray stone as the rest of the Dragonspine range. It didn’t look like any sort of grand formation, no runes sprawled across its surface, no careful creation… but still, somehow, it was a formation. How?

Carefully, she brushed off the layers of detritus that had accumulated on the small pylon, tracing the contours of its form. Once, it must have been a statue to some local god, or spirit… except, she was an educated woman and knew that there were no gods. At least not in their realm. So it had to be a formation, or an array…

Humming in curiosity, she dragged out a stack of paper and started scribbling out talismans. She wanted to know what was going on here, and the best way to do that was… well, she didn’t know the best way to do that. Maybe Master Mingtian had put an explanation for how to assess an emplaced formation in his scroll of notes, but she didn’t dare open that. Instead, she tried a different approach.

It was simple, more or less; one small talisman array on one side smoothed out the qi flow— which was a difficult thing to get right, without any ability to sense the qi herself, while another on the other side would receive the qi after it’d flowed through the formation. The distortions would hopefully be revealing… or, at least, tell her what was needed to form an idea of where the runes even were

.

She took a deep breath of the night air— smokey and a little warm on one side of the formation, and bitterly, soul-scouring cold on the other— and activated the formation.

It worked just as expected. The qi passed through the pylon and then— on the other side, the talisman she’d specially prepared began to glow with soft light. Not uniform like it would have if there was no obstruction at all, but in a pattern— an incredibly intricate, repeating, beautiful pattern that played itself out in a mesmerizing dance, from one end of the paper to the other, shifting and ebbing and…

She stared at it for a long while, blinking in blank-faced surprise, before she scrambled back over to her bag and grabbed the stylus that Mingtian had made for her. She wasn’t certain, but for some reason she had an idea that that wasn’t entirely normal…

Scooping up a pebble from off the ground, she shuffled off her right glove, gripping the bone-white stylus between bleached-white fingers, rendered just a little numb by the cold. Then, as she settled down by the fire— carefully, so painstakingly carefully— she began to carve. First, a single two-dimensional rune, carved with butter-smooth finesse, the stylus cutting through the hard rock like it was a particularly soft clay. She had the absurd thought that it would make a wonderful sculptor’s tool… then, she focused back on her task.

A second cold pebble, a second rune; this time she drew one of the three-dimensional runes she knew onto the surface of the pebble. With the slightly larger size and still adjusting to the complexity of the stylus, it ended up a bit bigger than she intended, wrapping around the pebble almost web-like…

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Then, she used the same test she’d used on the pylons, and— just as she’d suspected, the patterns were far simpler. The first pebble only left a ripple of light, as befitting of a single point disturbance, while the second was a little more interesting, but essentially much the same. Which meant…

How many runes were in those pillars? What level of complexity had they been made at, so long ago that whatever story they’d once worn had been reduced to tatters and so much myth, and simple nothingness?

It was fascinating.

She returned back to the pylon, remaking the glowing talisman— but not the whole array to align the qi flows, because that formation was horribly annoying to make, and just… started investigating. Looking, at least, to see if she could find anything at all…

For hours, until the fire fell fallow to faint darkness, and flickering coals bravely facing the gloomy night—

She fell asleep unsatisfied, and satisfied, and curious— and most importantly, with the very first seed of an idea.

………

The last vestiges of a dream fled from her as she regained consciousness, bright sunlight streaming into their tent with all the crystal clarity of the night sky below. It was almost blinding— now that the clouds had parted above, as though rent in twain by some vastly powerful cultivator, the snow reflected the brilliance of sunlight above and cast everything in their camp into harsh refrain. The fire had died out sometime during the night, and their driver had already packed up most everything, ready to—

The idea!

It came back to her, a wave crashing giddy over her entire psyche as she shot upright and crashed headfirst into Avyr, who was lucky he was so fluffy. Otherwise, that might have hurt… but— she had an idea! “I think,” she said with a beaming smile as she stepped fully out of their tent and stretched in the brisk morning air— “that I know how to make the qi gathering formation.”

“You?” It wasn’t Avyr who responded, whoever— the driver had stopped in his task, giving her an incredulous look. “Isn’t that the sort of thing foundation establishment formation masters work on?”

“Foundation establishment masters out here in nowhereville, maybe.” She scoffed, but the sound was pretty obviously forced. It was obvious that everyone had their doubts to the veracity of that particular statement, after everything… “but I’ve got an idea at what I need to do. I was looking at the formation here last night, and… basically, it relies on the same principles as a qi gathering formation. I’d been wondering how to rely on the gradient like that, but I think what it does is find the high-yin qi; the breath of cold that attunes to the snow and ice of the world— and activate it into a fuel source to push the warmer yang qi into a barrier. It’s fascinating…”

The driver— and Avyr for that matter— both gave her incredulous looks. “You figured all that out in… half a night?”

She crossed her arms and puffed out her chest, chin up high, smugly. “Of course I did! You didn’t doubt me, did you?”

“Of course not.” Avyr chuffed out a soft laugh, then started to pull down their tent, undoing its strings and pulling out the stakes. “Anyways, could you help me out with this, please? Much as I would love to stuff this into its comically little bag, I can’t help but think that someone would do a better job. Someone with long, grippy fingers. Made for gripping.”

Lily rolled her eyes and let go of her pose, plodding over to take the half-rolled up tent from her friend. “Of course, of course. What else am I here for?”

“Your dashing good looks?”

“You can’t even fully appreciate those. You’re not even human.”

Avyr chirped out a soft laugh. “Yeah, yeah, but then again, you can’t appreciate my handsome, chiseled body.”

“You’re cute.”

“And you’re bold for calling a seven foot long, deadly predator cute.”

“You can’t play that card on me— I know you well enough to know the truth of that matter…” and so on, bantering about nothing and everything as they loaded the truck and settled in for the long ride to their next destination, as the driver looked on and even occasionally chuckled…

Beneath a lurid sky, alight with the promise—

A strange possibility, that hope; that they might—

To the rumble beneath them and the gravel-road rattle, and the crunch of snow-over-ice, and the long road ahead— they continued onwards.