Thresholder

At the end of their first week at Silver Fish Moon Gate Temple, and with the special permission of Master Shan Yi, Perry stayed outside during the arcshadow.

All of the members of the second sphere, save for Zhang Lingxiu, were in attendance, with Perry tightly bound in the center courtyard using second sphere materials that felt like nothing more than soft ropes. All of the members of the first sphere, save for Maya Singh, had gone down from the temple and into the valley proper to train among the bamboo forests.

Perry was nearly naked, wearing only a wrap around his crotch, one which would hopefully not require repair. He didn’t like that aspect of this, but most of them had seen him nude already, and if learning to control his werewolf powers meant hanging dong, then by god he was going to hang some dong.

Luo Yanhua had her bow, and Perry got to see the full assortment of weaponry on display among the dozen or so second sphere disciples. There were more of them than he’d counted during his time at the temple thus far, but once you were second sphere you spent a lot of your time meditating and didn’t need to bathe or eat unless you really wanted to, or at least that was how it seemed. One of the women that was new to Perry had a set of five chakrams, and he wondered whether she’d gotten the message that she wasn’t supposed to kill him.

The arcshadow came at noon as the ring passed in front of the sun, obscuring it slowly. Perry was tense and ready, though he couldn’t really be ready, since he’d lose the sense of himself.

When the last of the sun disappeared, Perry felt the hairs on the back of his arms stand up. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, trying to feel the transformation taking hold, mostly so that next time he’d be able to hold it back. It was a series of symptoms though, not a burning fuse that he could snuff out, and he opened his eyes, locking them on the largest of the three moons. It was three-quarters full, waxing gibbous, and the light was almost pressing against his skin. With the other two moons beside it, working together, it felt as though it was just barely enough to push him over the edge.

Then the sun peeked out from the other side of the arc, the brief minutes of eclipse having passed. Perry hadn’t transformed. He let out a sigh of relief. There was a risk, but he could stop hiding in his armor every time the arcshadow came, no more hopping in and out of the armor, which had started to grate on him.

“Very well,” said Luo Yanhua. “We will induce the transformation.”

They had talked about this, but Perry still flinched, and when one of the second sphere men blasted him with a pulse of moonlight, he wished that he hadn’t agreed to it.

The ropes didn’t hold him. The transformation made him larger, and his chest simply burst the rope apart, however much it was supposed to be something special. It happened fast, but the second sphere disciples around him didn’t so much as waver.

When the wolf was on all fours, sharp claws scoring the flagstones, it was all about the choice of meat. Two among them smelled familiar, not friends, but with a close enough reek of friendship that they would be eaten last. There was still a smell of an adversary in the air, but he wasn’t present, had gone away to hide somewhere, fearing claws and fangs.

The old man barked an order, unintelligible, and the wolf turned on him. The name, Shan Yin, surfaced to the wolf’s mind, a marker, unimportant. There was something in the wolf’s mind that said this man was dangerous, but he looked small and weak, hair age-bleached.

The wolf attacked, and Shan Yin moved to meet him. He was unarmed and used only his fragile body. The wolf bit down, and was surprised to find that the bite was stopped, something lodged in its open mouth, hard as stone. When the wolf tried to open his mouth, whatever was lodged there — the man’s arm — became further stuck.

The wolf was panicked, the feeling of choking already provoking a response, and it whipped its head to the side, throwing the old man, who landed on soft feet as though blown into place by the wind. The arm, at least, had been dislodged. A careful look at the man showed that he was uninjured.

The wolf howled in frustration, then went on the attack again, aiming squarely for the old master. This time, it was turned away with a kick hard enough to rattle teeth. When it came with claws, the old master spun and dodged, his robes flaring up and obscuring his movements. He landed few blows against the wolf, but the wolf was unable to draw blood, and the more he missed, the more frenzied he grew.

Perry became aware of himself only as he began shrinking back down to size, but the anger faded more slowly. It was like getting angry about not being able to find his car keys only to realize that they’d been in his coat pocket the entire time, anger that only grudgingly gave way to embarrassment.

He was standing in the middle of the courtyard, hanging dong.

Shan Yin had felt invincible while they were fighting, but as Perry calmed and got his wrap back on, he saw that the master was sweating and breathing heavily. For someone of the second sphere, that was like flopping down on the ground and gasping for air.

“You are well, initiate?” asked Shan Yin.

“Yes master,” replied Perry with a short bow. He was getting better at the bowing, and knowing when it should be done, as well as at what angle. The temple master received bows with a regularity that Perry would have found grating.

“We should go again, master,” said Luo Yanhua. “As many times as we can. Perry will not learn to control his technique without practice.”

Master Shan Yin waved her off. “It is an unacceptable risk. He is strong, in that form. I called him to me so that I could take on the burden of the fight, but his brute strength is a match for the second sphere. Moon Gate’s techniques are stronger, but the wall we have built through study must never be considered impregnable.”

Perry felt enlightened. Part of the reason for them doing this, he realized, was to redeem the sect. If Master Shan Yin was capable of defeating the oversized wolf, then the problem was not with the sect and its ability to produce good warriors. Instead, any reasonable observer would have to conclude that the problem was Zhang Lingxiu, a crippled and disgraced warrior. They didn’t just want to protect the students by learning the boundaries, and didn’t just want to help Perry learn control, they wanted to save face.

Perry wondered how much Shan Yin had practiced for this fight, and whether the old master might have juiced it somehow. He’d heard of magical herbs and ointments, which was mostly second sphere stuff. Something of that nature was going to be what propelled Perry and Maya past the first sphere and into the second, and hopefully not kill them in the process.

They hadn’t agreed to a fair fight — far from it, given how outnumbered Perry had been. Yet the suspicion that the temple’s master had used some kind of enhancement and was now chalking his victory up to the teachings of the temple … that didn’t sit right.

Perry checked himself. It was possible he was just being a sore loser, even though he’d gone into the fight wanting to lose, or better, able to control himself well enough that there never was a fight. Shan Yin had seemed to move faster though, to not get so much as a scratch. Could all that be explained purely by a difference in how much they had trained? Perry honestly didn’t know.

Luo Yanhua seemed disappointed that the ‘demonstration’ was over, and while Perry was adjusting his underwear, she came over to him.

“Did you make progress?” she asked.

“I remembered his name while I was a wolf,” said Perry. “I don’t think that’s nothing.” He needed more, but had no right to demand it.

“We will have to do this again,” said Luo Yanhua, echoing his thoughts. “It is safer in the daytime, when the sunlight will change you back, but we must also see you change under the light of the moons rather than solely through the application of their power.”

“That moonbeam I was hit with, that would have killed a normal man?” asked Perry.

“The injury would be grave, but unless he was a weak man, no, it would not kill,” replied Luo Yanhua.

“And instead, it gives me power,” said Perry. “I’m … immune?”

“Immunity is a conditioning of the internal alchemy against outside threats, nothing more,” said Luo Yanhua. “But this is something different, a reaction to energy of a certain tenor. And yes, your reaction to such power is an inversion of expectations.”

“Hey wolfdick,” said Maya, who seemed to have had enough of standing back.

“Hey,” said Perry. She was in her hoodie, wildly out of place, though the second sphere seemed to favor bold colors and wild styles. The neon-graffiti style was out of place, but within the same aesthetic realm.

“So this is a power development for you, yeah?” she asked. “If you get moon powers, that means that you can transform when you want to?”

“Lunar energy is difficult to hold,” said Luo Yanhua. “It takes time to develop one of the vessels for that purpose.”

“Huh,” said Maya. “And what vessel would, uh, hold solar energy?”

“There are two,” said Luo Yanhua. “The Light Linking Vessel and the Light Heel Vessel.”

“And you guys don’t have some paper where I could write all this stuff down?” asked Maya.

“Write it down?” asked Luo Yanhua. “This is simple information. You are expected to learn it so well that to see it written on paper would be an insult.”

“That’s dumb,” said Maya. “I’d learn it faster if I could run through it on paper first.”

“Paper is precious here,” said Perry. “This might be a translation issue.” He looked at Luo Yanhua. “Bamboo slips?”

“Ah,” said Luo Yanhua. “Yes, we can have bamboo slips. They are not commonly used, as literacy is uncommon in the first sphere, but they are available to you. You know calligraphy?”

“Nope,” said Maya. “I know my alphabet though, and how to make the letters.” She puffed up her chest like she was proud of that fact, and Perry laughed, or at least breathed audibly through his nose.

“Then I will provide you with bamboo slips, if you believe it will help you,” said Luo Yanhua. “Ink and brushes will be available from my own supply.”

Perry looked over at Shan Yin, who was in low conversation with three of the inner disciples. He had an ear for their language, and this was something else, a third language used for private discussion. Second sphere could bend language to their will, and would often make up a language that only other second sphere could decipher. He didn’t like that.

“He put his arm in my mouth, didn’t he?” asked Perry.

“Yes,” said Luo Yanhua. “When the wolf opens its mouth wide, it intends to close it. The defense is simple, bold, and nearly impossible to execute, which Shan Yin has often said is at the heart of his approach to lunar techniques.”

This was the first that Perry was hearing of it. His information was limited by his inability to talk with the other students though, and Luo Yanhua was cagey, even as their relationship as researcher and test subject was flourishing.

“We should take him out into the woods at night,” said Maya.

“At night?” asked Perry. “That seems dangerous.”

“It seems instructive,” said Luo Yanhua. “But I fear that without Master Shan Yin, the prospect becomes much more dangerous. And given the outcome of this exercise, he would not come along with us.”

“He put himself in danger,” said Perry. “He could barely keep up.”

“He was not attempting to kill you,” said Luo Yanhua.

“No,” said Perry. “Sorry, I wasn’t intending to give offense, I was just saying that I don’t blame him for not wanting to undergo that again.”

“The Green Snake Valley has mountains to the south,” said Luo Yanhua. “There are places we could go that would take us away from innocents.” She nodded to herself. “If our attempts to control the process of transformation were stymied, I could retreat to the lunar surface and you —”

“I can handle myself,” said Maya. “How fast can a wolf be?”

“That would be one of the things we might find out to our chagrin,” said Luo Yanhua.

The three of them were standing in the center of the courtyard having this conversation, and Perry wished that they could have it somewhere more private. He trusted Luo Yanhua not to do anything that would get them in trouble with the temple … to a point. She had also said that she wasn’t tightly tethered to this place, and that she was so tightly bound to the vague concept of academia that she’d literally die if she didn’t get a paper published.

He didn’t want to ask for reassurance that it was okay though.

The other students came back later in the day, and Perry paid close attention to the looks he was getting. They were less dismissive of him than they had been before. They had known his strength and thought him a fool, but the work he’d been putting in was clearly showing. He would have liked to be able to talk to them, but he was being carried along only by his actions, or what the inner disciples chose to relate. He hoped that the midday demonstration would win him some points.

Perry slept in his armor that night, and dreamed of the day when he’d no longer have to take that precaution either. He was waking up stiff and sore more often than not, short on sleep, and starting to have some back problems. That had all been washed away with the transformation, aches and pains gone, his body reset, but he had to feel as though transforming into a wolf and then back again because of a bad sleeping situation was hardly ideal.

Two days after Perry had turned into a wolf in the courtyard, he was summoned, along with Maya, to Shan Yin’s room on the third floor. Unlike last time, they were together, two pillows waiting for them and Shan Yin in a meditative pose in the empty expanse of his room.

If the fight had put a strain on Shan Yin, he wasn’t showing it. He sat on his larger pillow, serene and composed, clothes artfully draping him. Of all the members of the temple, he was the most important, and his appearance went beyond vanity — this was a fisher kingdom, and if he had been seen in disarray, that might have consequences. Perry respected some of the pomp a little more now.

“Good news or bad news?” asked Maya, first thing.

“I have met with the other masters of Moon Gate, Master Lian Qingshan of the Crystal Lake Temple and Master Wu Yujin of the Moonshadow Temple.” He was electing to ignore Maya, which was probably a good idea, except that Perry didn’t know whether she’d take that well. “We have discussed your role here within the Great Arc, what we might learn from you, and you from us. It is not often the case that there is a threat to the first sphere that might be dealt with in this way. Similarly, it is not often that a student of Moon Gate has anything that might be learned — if not taught.”

“We’ve been here a week, master,” said Perry. “Yet it hasn’t seemed to me that there has been much attempt at learning from us.”

“Learning must be done with judicious forethought,” said Master Shan Yin. “We have seen techniques from both of you, many of them using tools, some more afflictions than techniques, but for us to incorporate those into our understanding of the martial arts would be a complicated affair.”

Perry frowned, but it was Maya who asked the question. “You couldn’t learn the thing and then just not use it?”

“That is a novice’s view of knowledge,” said Master Shan Yin. “It should not surprise me that you ask such a question. But no, what we learn cannot be unlearned, and we cannot risk the lack of control that Perry shows, cannot risk being seduced by a forbidden technique.”

“Fine, fine,” said Maya. “So are you going to give us the herb or not?”

Master Shan Yin looked at her with impassive eyes that somehow communicated his disdain for her without any movement of his eyebrows. “We have decided that you need more time at the temple, not only to strengthen your vital pathways and vessels, but to ensure that you do not become a stain upon Moon Gate upon your transition to the second sphere. Three months must pass before the masters reconvene on this subject.”

Perry had been worried that Maya would say something untoward, but she only sat there, sullen and brooding as she chewed over the news.

“Is there nothing we can do to plead our case, master?” asked Perry.

“The word of the masters is final,” said Master Shan Yin. “We will not help you to transition in such a way, not without more time. The Celestial Ascension Blossom is not a flower to be eaten lightly. Only those we are sure are ready should take the arduous hike up the Dragon’s Breath Peak.”

Maya moved to say something, and Perry put his hand out. She didn’t like that at all, but she fell silent.

“We hear and understand, master,” said Perry.

Again Maya opened her mouth to speak, and this time Perry silenced her with a look. They would have to speak later. He’d understood the message.

The master had some words for them about how the next months would go, a change in lodging so they would no longer have private rooms, a change in tutelage so they would have private instruction from the disciples, and few other things. Perry wasn’t giving it his full attention, because he was thinking about the Celestial Ascension Blossom, whose name he now knew — whose name and location Shan Yin had given to them.

“What?” asked Maya after they had left the master’s room. She looked annoyed.

“My room,” said Perry.

They made their way through the temple, whose corridors they knew much better now, though there were still many rooms he hadn’t gone in, most of them belonging to one disciple or another. The spartan room that he called home wasn’t going to belong to him for much longer. He’d instead be in the common dorms, a normal student, and he had no idea what he was supposed to do with the bulky armor, which dominated the space in the room. That was a blow that felt like another nudge by the master.

“He wants us to go get it on our own,” said Perry.

“How do you figure?” asked Maya.

“He told us what it is and where it is,” said Perry. “I guess he expects us to return, stronger, without having directly ordered us there. I don’t know if he’s subverting the other masters or whether this is a test, or just deniability, but we should go there, together, soon.”

“Shit,” said Maya. “Yeah, okay, I can see it. But just because we know the name of the flower doesn’t mean we’ll be able to find it.”

“True,” said Perry. “We’ll need to figure that out. It’s either that, or waiting around under the oppressive training regime for another three months, during which time the other thresholder is probably going to show up, or maybe transition to second sphere if they’re here already. We’re under a time limit.”

“I’m not saying no,” said Maya. “But it’s a big step.” She bit her lip. “I’m trying to play back the conversation in my head, trying to see what his tone was, whether it was a wink and a nod or just … the way he talks, like he was trying to put some gravity into it.”

“March will have the recording,” said Perry. “You can decide. And yes, we’ll still have to figure out which flower it is. But scaling a mountain to get to it will be a piece of cake for us, if you can bounce like you say you can. Personally, I’ll just be flying.”

“Dragon’s Arm Peak?” she asked.

“Dragon’s Breath Peak,” replied Perry.

“No actual dragons involved?” asked Maya.

“I wouldn’t count on that,” said Perry.

“Alright, fine, fuck it, let’s do it,” said Maya. “Tonight?”

Perry looked at the armor. “There was something that I’ve been meaning to ask you, I just didn’t know when the time would be right.” He looked over at her. “I need your help to repair the armor.”

“Help … in what way?” asked Maya. “The nanites did what they could and your AI wasn’t the hacker we’d been hoping, did I miss something?”

“There are additional repairs,” said Perry. “Delicate work with glass, plastics, that kind of thing, work that needs them to heat themselves up or something, I don’t know. It would kill some of them in the process, and needs your explicit authorization.”

“Ah,” said Maya. “Then no.”

“No?” asked Perry. “There’s a gun in the shoulder, once that’s fully repaired, I have three full clips, that might be enough to kill the second sphere guys. And I didn’t even say how much it would cost.”

“I said no,” said Maya. Her face had become a scowl. “Did you think that ‘no’ was the start of a negotiation?”

“I don’t know how I’m supposed to respond to that,” said Perry. “It’s not reasonable.”

“Yeah, whatever, no is a no,” said Maya with a brusque shrug. “I’m not giving up part of my best piece of gear to make yours marginally better.”

“It’s a gun,” said Perry. “We can’t stand against the second sphere. You know we can’t. A gun gives us a chance.”

The gun was only a part of the proposed repairs whose costs would need authorization, but it was one of the most important ones. In the last world, Cosme had been able to block almost any shot, but that had been with an impossibly powerful magic item, and Perry hadn’t yet seen the likes of that here. Even outside of wolf form, they seemed to only dodge his sword by inches.

“I’m going to say no one more time,” said Maya. “No.”

Perry clenched his teeth. “Alright. Thanks for considering it.”

“We need to identify the flower before we leave,” said Maya. “Get some kind of description. You said that Luo Yanhua had books, did she have any on botany?”

“I don’t know,” said Perry. “I wasn’t given the opportunity to look through them. And before you say it, sneaking into her room is a non-starter. We can’t be thieves here.”

“We’d just need to read a single page,” said Maya. “If you’re right that the master wanted us to go find the power-up flower, then he must have thought we’d find a way to figure out what flower it is. He couldn’t have wanted us to bumble our way up a mountain, right?”

“He might have,” said Perry. “It might be a way of proving ourselves. But I don’t think violating the norms of the temple would be a part of it.”

“Fucking kung fu masters and their riddles,” said Maya with a sigh. She turned away from Perry. “Fine, we ask Luo Yanhua — or you ask her, because she likes you — and then when she says no, we … what, take off in the dead of the night? Because if you’re talking about violating norms, I’ve never seen any of the first sphere students leave.”

“Li Yunfeng and Xu Wuying both did,” said Perry.

“Shit, you know their names?” asked Maya.

“March does,” said Perry. “He made a guide for me, based mostly on recorded conversations, so it’s hopefully accurate. But I was a teaching assistant in my home world, so memorizing the names of students is something that comes naturally to me. Both of those students left, and from what I can gather, they left in order to go help with the community, to commit their labor to other realms. Luo Yanhua does that too from time to time, it’s what she was doing when I first saw her. But I’m not saying that we should lie, I’m saying that we should go out and do that, but do it while making our way to the mountain.”

Maya nodded. “Alright, that’s sorted. Road trip?”

“Road trip,” said Perry.

He approached Luo Yanhua with the idea later in the day, as the sun was setting, having thought it over.

“We have seen little of this world,” Perry said to Luo Yanhua later that night. “Moon Gate is entwined with the Kingdom of Seven Valleys, but we have experienced only the Silver Fish Temple. Your students come in here from all over the kingdom, having known its ways and people, with a connection to the land. We would like the same.”

Luo Yanhua regarded him, then nodded. “It is a sensible request, though it will require your studies to be put on hold. Though … I was to engage you and Miss Singh in private instruction, and I require more study of your dual transformations to complete my publication. This represents an unfortunate inconvenience for me.”

Perry watched her impassive face. “Would it be possible for you to come with us?”

“An excellent suggestion,” said Luo Yanhua. “I would not want to, as Miss Singh has said, ‘cramp your style’, but you would benefit from a translator and chaperone.”

“Ah,” said Perry. He didn’t know how much she knew. “We had hoped to head for the Dragon’s Breath Peak.”

“A lovely place this time of year,” said Luo Yanhua. “The roads are lined with peaches, which will be in bloom. There are bandits, of course, the refuse of the Grouse Kingdom, but you have shown that you can more than hold your own, at least against those of the first sphere.”

Perry was watching her. If she would stop them from seeking the flower, that might be a problem. It would be good to have her with them, and in fact she could trivialize the entire operations, but if she was going to tattle on them … he didn’t think she would, but it wasn’t something that he wanted to be dancing around for the duration of the trip.

“I’ve heard that there are more interesting flowers out that way, beyond just the peach blossoms,” said Perry.

“Such as?” asked Luo Yanhua, arching an eyebrow.

“The Celestial Ascension Blossom,” said Perry, taking the leap. Either she was with them, ready to help because of wheels greased by Shan Yin, or she was going to be a thorn in the side of this little excursion. “Only I don’t know where it’s found, or what it looks like.”

She watched him. The silence stretched between them. It was possible he was implicating her, or straining against her web of tethers. “It is frost-kissed white, with inner petals as the pink of a seashell,” said Luo Yanhua. “It grows only in a bed of verdant moss beneath a foul, twisted tree that stinks of pus.”

Perry nodded. “We will seek it on our own, of course.”

“Of course,” nodded Luo Yanhua, seeming relieved. He was getting better at reading the minute changes of her face.

“Road trip?” asked Perry.

“We will make a trip along the road, where the road is available,” said Luo Yanhua with a nod.