Thresholder

Perry wasn’t entirely sure of the nomenclature. The first sphere members of the temple were students, disciples, or possibly something else. He was going to have to nail down the terms, given how much they seemed to rely on honor and respect. There was no need to insult someone by using the wrong term.

Whatever they were called, they were gathered in the courtyard for training. He was only barely on time, the last to arrive. The other students were talking to each other, though some were doing stretches, and Perry decided that he wanted to limber up too, since this might last the majority of the day. The sun had only just risen over the eastern edge of the arc. Maya came over to him as he was making sure his legs weren’t going to cramp.

“How’d it go?” she asked.

She looked different out of her streetwear. Her hair was more flouncy when not hidden by her hood, and the outfit she’d been given showed less skin. It seemed like it fit her better than Perry’s fit him, but she was close in stature to the average woman here. Perry hoped that in the next world he wouldn’t be such a giant, but it was almost as bad as Teaguewater, at least among the first sphere.

The bruise on her face was black and purple, but she didn’t seem to be affected by it too much. She smiled without wincing.

“It went fine,” said Perry. “They’re on the fence about us.”

“Excited for training?” asked Maya. She had started doing some half-hearted standing stretches. “I haven’t had a proper training session for a long time. In the world where I got my telekinesis there was a stretch of it, mostly because they were worried I was going to die. Do you think we’ll get to spar?“

“I don’t know,” said Perry. “I’m curious whether their training will help us.”

“You think you’re good, outside the suit?” asked Maya.

“Hard to say,” said Perry. “I haven’t had a chance to fight hand-to-hand. I’m always in the armor, almost always with the sword.”

“I have my bracer with me still,” said Maya, tapping it beneath her sleeve. “I can TK the sword to me in two heartbeats. I don’t think I’d want your armor. Can’t bring it with you, have to store it somewhere that you trust.” She clucked her tongue. “Seems like a hassle.”

“We need to find a time to get our armors talking,” said Perry.

“And have a private chat,” said Maya, nodding. “We’ll go along with this though. I’m expecting us to crush it to dust.”

Perry was too, but he wasn’t foolish enough to say it out loud. Perhaps not the forms, which they wouldn’t know and which the acolytes had been practicing for years, but if it was about unarmed combat, he was pretty sure that being a werewolf meant that he was much stronger than any of them, and he was no slouch when it came to a fight.

The day before, it had been Shan Yin leading the group, but this day it was a different member of the second sphere, the woman Perry had seen with a giant tome open in front of her. She had a tight red jacket with a collar and brass buttons, along with matching pants. Her hair was two-tone, black and white, done up in what felt like too many buns. They hadn’t been given a tour of the temple, and the day had been short on introductions. Her name was Li Xinyue, an inner disciple, whatever that difference of position meant: Luo Yanhua was an outer disciple. He idly wondered whether they had an org chart he could consult.

When the woman began moving, the class began following her, and Perry did his best to do what everyone else around him was doing.

Whatever martial art they were doing, it was a connection of flowing moves, punches and kicks that led into each other in a continuous loop. By the third time through, it was clear that this was far more difficult than it looked, partly by virtue of the footwork being precise. Because each movement led directly to the next, a foot coming down at the wrong angle meant that it would be hard for it to come up for a kick a few seconds later. Everything involving the arms was a bit easier, but that was just because his mistakes were less obvious.

The woman called out a command to the class, who continued the same pattern, and walked over to Perry, who was still trying to do his best to follow along.

“Spine straight, shoulder in,” she said to him, the first words she’d spoken in English. “Spine straighter,” she clarified after he’d tried to straighten up. “The vertebrae must stack on top of each other, like a tower of rocks, welded together as a sword is. Raise the chin, bring the head up from the shoulders.” She touched him, even as he continued the form, adjusting his hips, his ankles, his arms, forming his hands into a better fist, placing her fingers on his head to lift it up.

It took some time before she was remotely satisfied, another three full rotations of the form, and then she moved on to Maya, who took the whole thing with good humor. It seemed as though Maya needed fewer adjustments, which shouldn’t have rankled Perry as much as it did.

It went on for what felt like forever, and the disciples — or whatever they were — were working up a sweat, which Perry realized he could smell hanging in the clifftop air. The sun was bright overhead, but there was a breeze that kept it from getting too warm, and he felt like he’d have been able to keep it up all day. When he looked over at Maya, she wasn’t doing nearly so well. She was dripping sweat and her form had deteriorated. She had her own particular smell, like a wicker basket of linens, slightly salty, and it surprised Perry that he could pick it out.

When it seemed like some of the disciples were ready to collapse, their instructor called for them to stop. The relaxation was palpable as the synchronized movements came to an end and each person began moving on their own again. There was a brief break, with two large clay jugs of water brought out by a disciple who was apparently not taking part in the training exercises. Perry tried to mimic the way that the other students took small sips of water, making a cup of his hands, but Maya just shaped her bracer into a black pint glass and took deep gulps. He would have to talk with her about that. If he was right that this place was like Seraphinus, doing what other people were doing was the right way to go.

By the time he’d been done with Seraphinus, he’d found the whole place to be stifling, their strange ways grating. Maya might be going through something similar. He didn’t know what her last world had been, but it could have been one where she was butting up against cultural problems too many times. Dark skin and being a woman might not have helped much, though he supposed that depended on the world. This was the first world where he was in the ethnic minority, and he already didn’t like it, though it hadn’t been too bad.

After a break to catch their breath and drink their water, the students returned to the courtyard and began a different set of exercises, this one focused on breathing. It was close to being meditation, though everyone had their eyes open, and their teacher was speaking in clinical terms. She translated less than half of it into English, only short bits so the two outsiders could follow along, and there wasn’t much attempt at getting them up to speed.

“Air is a part of the internal alchemy,” she said. “The water you just drank was as well. The internal alchemy of the first sphere is unbalanced. You take in clean air and release air that has been fouled. You take in clean water and excrete urine. Our purpose in deliberate breathing is to focus on the internal alchemy, the feel of those processes inside you, their imbalance becoming apparent. Even in the second sphere we have not fully banished the imbalances, but alteration of the internal alchemy is paramount to the pursuit of transition.”

Perry tried to focus on deliberate breathing, but it was hard. Most of what she said sounded like nonsense, but if they were really going without breathing or drinking water, if they didn’t need meals, then he was going to listen as closely as he could to their instructions on how that was done. He wasn’t going to count on the worlds being perfectly hospitable, or even imperfectly hospitable. He would have loved to have not breathed the air of Teaguewater.

The breathing session lasted two hours and left Perry painfully bored. He was trying his best, he really was, but he didn’t have the temperament to do something that didn’t seem like it was helping him in any way. Clearly these people had some sort of magic, but one of the lessons he’d learned from Seraphinus was that just because there was real, literal magic didn’t mean the magicians were experts. Romuald had been the high wizard of the Kingdom of Seraphinus, and it was easy to trap him in inconsistencies that would have him speaking about vague concepts that held no water.

When the agonizingly slow breathing stuff was finished with, they split up into pairs for sparring. Perry instinctively went to Maya, but the teacher was over to them almost at once, putting each of them with one of the disciples.

Perry’s opponent was five inches shorter than him, head shaved bald, with sunken eyes. These people were short on smiles, but this man particularly so. He looked unhappy to be fighting Perry, beyond just being unhappy in general. Before their match began, he made a gesture with his hands, palms out, a brief bow, and then a clap followed by a short word. Perry tried to match all that, but from the look on the disciple’s face, hadn’t done a good job. His attempt at the word seemed particular cause for offense, and he could hear that the syllables hadn’t come out right, but didn’t think his second attempt would be any better.

Perry had assumed that they’d be playfighting, but his opponent came in with unexpected swiftness and struck Perry directly in the solar plexus. Perry staggered back, opening himself up for a kick, which landed in the pit of his stomach even though he’d been trying to catch the kick. When the follow up strikes came as Perry stumbled back, he put up his arms to defend himself and caught the punches and strikes on his forearms.

The flurry of attacks had been unexpected, but it wasn’t actually hurting as much as Perry had thought it would. His opponent had gone hard, but was tiring himself out, and the attacks couldn’t possibly be sustained, especially when his fists were punching up against the hard bones of Perry’s forearms.

When there was a brief break in the string of attacks, Perry delivered a punch of his own. His opponent turned to the side, not quite dodging it, but turning it into a glancing blow. Still, he staggered back, and Perry kicked out at the man’s leg.

His opponent reeled back, gasping in pain and clutching his thigh. Perry wasn’t sure on protocol, whether that meant the end of the sparring match or if they were supposed to go until one of them tapped out, but he couldn’t imagine that they were supposed to actually hurt each other.

Maya was already standing over her opponent, who was moaning and rolling on the ground. From Maya’s bemused expression, it had been a lopsided fight.

While Perry was distracted, his opponent came in, but Perry returned his attention to the fight and caught the leg that had been swinging around to clock him in the head. He grabbed his opponent’s ankle and lifted him up, and while he’d only been attempting to tip the other man over, Perry found himself holding him up for just a moment, dangling him above the ground before dropping him. He had known that being a werewolf granted him some strength in human form, but he hadn’t realized that he could lift a full-grown man with one hand. He let out a laugh. It felt ridiculous.

His opponent, once he’d gathered himself up from the ground, got on his knees and bowed as low as possible, prostrating himself.

“It’s fine,” said Perry, feeling slightly embarrassed. “Get up.”

The other man stayed where he was.

Perry looked for the teacher, hoping that she would intervene, but instead he saw a man of the second sphere coming toward him. This was one he hadn’t met before, a man with a long ponytail that went down to the small of his back and a crimson buttoned-up jacket that swept behind him only a few inches off the stones of the courtyard. He had white pants and bare feet, and his hands were clenched in fists.

“You do not belong here, Peregrin,” he said.

“Shan Yin has allowed us to stay,” said Perry. “You disagree with this temple’s master?”

“I cannot stand idly by while you humiliate our disciples,” he replied. “I am Zhang Lingxiu, Dragon-Tiger Guardian, and I will have the satisfaction of demonstrating the true combat of the Silver Fish Temple.” With a flourish, he removed his jacket, revealing a bare chest beneath it. He was lean and muscular, hairless, and his muscles rippled as he dropped into a fighting stance. It was the same stance they’d been practicing a few hours before.

Perry wondered how, precisely, this worked. They were different spheres. Were second sphere allowed to fight first sphere? Did both have to agree to the fight? There was some kind of prohibition, but apparently this didn’t count.

“For the record, I think you’re going to kick my ass,” said Perry. He dropped into his own fighting stance, not the one that the teacher had shown, but something that he was more comfortable with, a boxer’s stance, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

The rest of the disciples had stopped what they were doing in order to watch. Maya was looking on in interest. Perry wasn’t entirely sure why her match hadn’t been cause for offense.

Perry attacked first, mostly because it felt like that’s what Lingxiu wanted, and the period of standing there, facing off and sizing each other up, could only go on for so long. He threw a punch straight at Lingxiu’s face with his full strength behind it. Perry had been in a boxing match approximately once, and knew enough to have sloppy form that was better than nothing, feet shoulder-width apart, one foot slightly ahead of the other, lead foot pointing straight ahead, back foot turned out at a 45-degree angle. He engaged his core to start the punch, ready to transfer his body weight into his fist when it landed. He was thinking about all this, which was a bad sign, and he knew the execution was going to be terrible.

Lingxiu slipped past the punch and slapped Perry in the face. It wasn’t a hard slap. Instead it was tender, almost delicate. Then he was away, back in the stance he’d been in before. The blank expression that Perry associated with the second sphere was broken by a smirk, like a rock jutting up from calm waters.

The instructor said something, not in English, but also not in the language she’d been using with the disciples. Perry didn’t understand any of it, naturally, but her words sounded sharp, like a rebuke. Some of the amusement left Lingxiu’s face.

“Shattered Moonlight,” Lingxiu announced before extending his arm forward. It wasn’t a punch, not as Perry understood the concept. The power seemed to come from nowhere, not a shift in body weight or the snap of the arm. It was aimed not at Perry’s body, but at his own fist, and Perry felt a sharp jolt of pain as his knuckles were hit with what felt like a rod of steel.

“Crashing Ocean Kick,” said Lingxiu. He spun and kicked hard at Perry, who tried to turn to take it on his hip. That was a success, only in the sense that he would have an enormous bruise there, the imprint of a foot that would be visible for the next few mornings in the bathhouse.

Having the attacks called out before they happened was somehow more humiliating than the gentle slap had been.

“Wavering —” But before Lingxiu could announce another attack, Perry went on the offensive, throwing jabs and hooks, solid, powerful blows that connected only with air. Lingxiu twisted his body, side-stepped, ducked, dodged, effortlessly moving out of the way. He was seeming disinterested in the whole affair. The closest that Perry got was his knuckle briefly sliding along Lingxiu’s cheek. There was no way that it had actually hurt him, and it was entirely possible that Lingxiu had only done that to show off.

Perry was getting annoyed. Angry, really. Furious.

He’d experienced this only once before, when playing videogames with a college roommate. Perry had never particularly liked fighting games, but his roommate had seemed pumped to do something together. What had followed was Perry getting utterly dominated, juggled in the air or up against walls, hit with combos that meant he was completely locked up and unable to do anything. It had been made worse when his roommate had picked one of the ‘worst’ fighters in the roster, then continued with the domination. Perry had hated it, and hated it more because his roommate was enjoying it so much.

“Wavering Willow,” Lingxiu announced, once Perry had started to run out of steam. Lingxiu’s arm moved like a flowing river, twisting and sliding past Perry’s defenses, and when his hand hit Perry in the center of his pectoral muscle, it felt as though it was driving down into his chest. His heart skipped a beat, and he gasped with pain as he stumbled backward.

Lingxiu turned his back on Perry and addressed the gathered students. A few more of the second sphere had come by in ones and twos, their flashy clothes and immaculate eyebrows making them stand out from the drab outfits. Whatever Lingxiu was saying, it was said with a haughty air, and there was laughter lacing through the murmurs of the crowd. Laughter had not been a common sound in the temple.

There was a temptation to attack Lingxiu while his back was turned, but Perry could see that for the obvious trap that it was. Lingxiu was making a point, whether that was about the superiority of Moon Gate techniques or the terribleness of foreign interlopers or some other braindead thing. Perry wasn’t even sure what he’d done wrong, if anything. Maybe they thought his ability to floor a newbie was unearned. Maybe it was just ritual hazing of new people, like this was a goddamned fraternity. Or maybe they were just really racist.

Lingxiu turned back around to face Perry. He raised his hands casually, into the same boxing stance that Perry had been in. He shifted his feet around, bouncing on the balls of them, mocking.

Perry attacked, and this time, Lingxiu didn’t move at all, taking the punch straight to the face. His head snapped back, and when he lowered his head, there was a faint smile on his face.

“You have strength,” said Lingxiu. “Armor, a sword, and power beyond your station.”

“Is that what this is about?” asked Perry. “Putting me in my place? I already said that I had no illusions that I would win this fight.” He hadn’t thought he’d be so badly trounced though. There had been some hope that he could pull something out.

Lingxiu didn’t answer, he just got serious about the fight. Perry was strong, he was coming to grips with just how strong, but he wasn’t able to land those powerful hits, and he wasn’t fast enough to dodge or block the majority of Lingxiu’s attacks. The moves weren’t announced anymore, and there was no pause between them, but they were clearly techniques, splayed fingers and punches that seemed to swim through the air. Lingxiu punched Perry square in the face, backed up half a step, then leapt into the air and came down with a spinning kick that struck Perry in the side of his skull.

Perry found himself on his knees, battered and bruised. He’d be lucky if he didn’t have a concussion, and he knew there was no winning the fight, only hanging on until it was over. Everyone was watching and no one was helping.

Lingxiu was standing over him.

Perry was going to murder him, he decided in a moment of rage. He was going to wait until this fight was over, then sneak into the man’s room and murder him in his sleep, or poison his food, or maybe just wait until they could meet each other on equal footing, if it came to that. These thoughts came into Perry’s head unbidden, a promise that he was making to himself without even thinking about it, but it felt right and good to imagine Lingxiu clutching at a slit throat.

Perry could taste blood in his mouth. He could have gotten up, still, if he had more of a death wish.

Lingxiu reached an arm up to the sky, his whole body rigid. The arm was pointed in one specific direction, toward the largest of the three moons, and white mist began to swirl around the outstretched arm.

“No,” said Perry. He started to rise to his feet. They were called Moon Gate, and he’d seen the white beam of power as Luo Yanhua had teleported there. It was moon energy that Lingxiu was gathering, and Perry didn’t know for certain that it would do anymore than burn him, but — “Stop,” he said, trying to think about the words. “I’ll —”

From Lingxiu’s other hand came a torrent of white light, concentrated into the palm and thrust out at Perry. It hit like a blast of searing air, hot enough to burn, except instead of burning, Perry began to change.

He was a wolf in an instant, huge and snarling, shredding through the borrowed clothes. He leapt at the attacker with outstretched claws, but the attacker moved swiftly on feet that didn’t quite touch the ground, floating left. There was a smell of blood in the air though, and the man’s forearm was dripping red across the flagstones. He moved forward at speed, striking out with a spinning kick that caught the wolf in its head, and the wolf snapped its sharp teeth with powerful jaws.

When the warrior pulled away, he had one less hand.

There was fear and panic in the air. The wolf could smell it. His eyes were on the warrior, who was gripping the mangled place where his hand had been. The meat of the palm remained, but the fingers were in the wolf’s mouth, and were swallowed down whole, bones and all. The wolf smelled the shock and weakness, and as the students fled, the wolf moved on the bleeding man, intending to rend and then eat him.

A woman leapt up into the air and landed on the wolf’s back. It was the one whose scent had already been marked, wicker and linen, someone the wolf had fought before, and she slipped off before the wolf could throw her. She had a sword in hand, one that hadn’t been there a moment before, and the wolf turned on her, ready to kill.

When the wolf tried to open his mouth, he found that he couldn’t. The woman had left something behind when she’d landed on his back, something that was locking his teeth together. She made words with her mouth that washed over the wolf. Her eyes were wild, her face flushed with the battle fever, ready to stab him through with the long needle in her hand.

But as the wolf prepared to rend her with his claws, he felt his strength fading away from the midday sun. He stepped forward and felt that the claws had retracted, then took a second step and realized that he had pressed an elbow against the ground.

Perry came to himself, naked, something uncomfortable and black holding his mouth shut. Maya was standing in front of him, sword drawn and pointed at him, but when he looked at her with pitying eyes, she dropped the sword and came over to him. With a touch, the black band over his mouth was back as a bracer around her wrist.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Perry. “That healed me up.”

“Mentally?” she asked. “Emotionally?”

“Fine,” said Perry. He looked over at Lingxiu. The bleeding had stopped suspiciously fast, and he was being tended to by two women of the second sphere, triage on his wounds.

Perry took a moment to revel in it. He could taste Lingxiu’s blood in his mouth and on his lips. Revenge had come early, it seemed, and the promise he’d made, that he would kill this man, immediately came undone. That was just something he’d thought in the moment, and it had been rash. A few missing fingers, that felt like enough, satisfaction, of a sort.

“You’re a big boy, as a wolf,” said Maya.

“Yeah,” said Perry.

“Not sure it’s the best thing for our burgeoning alliance, you maiming a guy,” said Maya. “Though I could see it either way.”

“Not sure what crawled up his ass,” said Perry. “If you’re going to beat the shit out of someone, you should have the common courtesy to tell them why.”

Luo Yanhua left Lingxiu where he was and walked over to where Perry was standing. Given the shredding of his clothes, Perry was naked, and he was trying not to feel self-conscious about that. The men and women bathed separately, and he’d noticed that they lived separately, with the lower disciples having separate dorms for men and women. Perry was one of the few who had a room of his own, and he thought it likely that he’d be consigned to the dorm with the others if he had to be here for long. He wasn’t sure whose room he’d taken.

He also wasn’t sure what protocol was when you were naked in the middle of a temple like this, whether it was better to simply be nude, to grab a cloth and cover himself, or to just place his hand over his dick. He opted to stand there uncovered.

“You had not said that you were a wolf person,” said Luo Yanhua.

“It’s a weakness,” said Perry. “I prefer not to expose too many of those.”

“You transformed back without wanting to,” said Luo Yanhua.

“Back?” asked Perry.

“Back to a wolf,” said Luo Yanhua.

Lingxiu was helped off to the temple. He didn’t look at Perry, very deliberately so. The master Shan Yin was observing, but had not moved to intervene.

“I’m a human who turns into a wolf,” said Perry. “Not a wolf who turns into a human.”

Luo Yanhua considered this for a long moment. “That you control yourself is important. Can you do that?”

Perry looked up at the sun. There was another half hour until the eclipse. “I need to confine myself to my suit when the sun goes down, or is obscured.”

“That does not bode well for you,” said Luo Yanhua. “A man, even a wolf-man, should be in control of himself at all times.”

Perry agreed with that, overall, but there wasn’t a ghost’s chance of that happening any time soon. The werewolves from Teaguewater did have some control, but it took them time to not go into a frenzy when the full moon came.

“What happens now?” asked Maya.

“Now?” asked Luo Yanhua. “Perry will be put in new clothes, something simpler, which will not rip or tear. Training will continue after lunch. If the arcshadow will cause you problems, you have leave to deal with them.”

Perry clenched his teeth for a moment. “I’m not in trouble?” He asked. “He’s not in trouble?”

“Your trouble is your own,” said Luo Yanhua.

“He was going to beat me to mush and everyone was just going to be fine with that?” asked Perry. “That’s — I mean, that’s the kind of place that this is?”

“In his view, you had transgressed,” said Luo Yanhua. “You are a part of Moon Gate now, having slept in our walls and eaten our meals. He was within his rights to correct the transgression.”

“Even though I’m first sphere and he was second?” asked Perry.

“A father may strike his son,” Luo Yanhua replied.

This line of argument didn’t even remotely work on Perry, and wouldn’t have even if he’d accepted that as a disciple of Moon Gate Silver Fish Temple he had taken a role similar to that of a child.

“They beat people down like that often then?” asked Maya. “Someone steps out of line, you pop them one?”

“These circumstances are unique,” said Luo Yanhua. “But it is not uncommon for those of the second sphere to take an interest in the first sphere, and correct for behavior unbecoming of the sect.”

“I wasn’t trying to start anything,” said Perry. “I was just sparring, trying my best. I was going to spar with Maya, but we got split off from each other. I don’t even know what I did wrong. Do I get some instruction so I don’t get a beating again?” He felt awkward about saying that though, because all the damages, all the bruising, was gone. He didn’t know the limits of the regeneration that came with transformation, but it seemed like it was probably extensive.

“Fight with your entire soul,” said Luo Yanhua. “I was watching you spar with Liu Xinmei. You did not give him due respect. You fought sloppily. You allowed your power to speak for you, without the form to back it up. You did not honor your opponent.” She gestured to Maya. “How many strikes did Maya use?”

“I wasn’t watching her,” said Perry.

“One,” said Maya. “I saw my opening, punched like we’d been practicing, knocked her out cold.”

“So I should have hospitalized someone who didn’t have my advantages?” asked Perry.

“To kill in a sparring match would be unfortunate,” said Luo Yanhua. “But it is expected at Moon Gate that you will commit yourself to the fight unless you are attempting to teach.”

Perry frowned. He looked up at the sun again, tracking its motion. The arcshadow was coming soon. “Next time I’ll commit myself to the fight then,” said Perry. “I need to go put on my armor, it takes ten or fifteen minutes.”

“I can repair the clothes,” said Maya, pointing at the ripped remnants of the training outfit.

“You can?” asked Luo Yanhua. “You are a seamstress?”

Maya’s sword zipped to her hand. “I have a needle, don’t I?” She gave a wide, shit-eating grin. “Come on, let’s go.”