Heretical Fishing

Book 4: Chapter 48: Flock

Surrounded by uniform bricks and kaleidoscopic sources of light, Maria and Slimes eased forward, their wills leading a procession of chi toward the not-a-prison cells before them. It was... beautiful. Though her eyes were closed, Maria marvelled at the sight. Pink clouds of healing essence, belonging to her familiar as much as they did her, drowned out the world’s radiance.

The bars between them and the prisoners usually formed an impenetrable wall. A solid object that not even a drop of normal chi could hope to get through. But there was nothing normal about the chi she commanded. Rather than slam in and demand admittance, the clouds billowed in place for a moment, politely requesting entry.

Somehow, the building replied. Both inhuman and filled with authority, it asked a question in return: for what reason do you seek admission?

Though she currently had no physical form, Maria could feel herself blink at the, uhhh, structure? She suspected that relaying this entire sequence to others was going to be a nightmare.

Thankfully, Slimes was much less taken aback. He offered up their combined wills in answer, telling the building that they wanted to help the cultivators within. Wanted to heal them.

Will this facilitate their escape? the prison seemed to ask.

Nooope! came Slimes’s enthusiastic and wobbling voice, somehow floating through the air.

... Could Maria do that too?

H-Hello! she broadcast to nobody in particular, the volume of it surprising her even more than the fact it worked. The prison gave her a frown, unimpressed that she’d spoken—well, more like yelled—a pointless word. Yuuup. This was definitely going to be a nightmare to explain.

Thaaanks! Slimes sang with all the subtlety Maria had lacked. She would’ve left it at that, but Slimes gave her the mental equivalent of a nudge in the side, encouraging her to try again.

Th-thanks, Maria said, this time in a whisper.

The building offered them a respectful nod. It remained vigilant within the cell, ready to step in if the prisoners tried anything funny.

The prisoners! Maria shook herself. They were the reason she and Slimes were there. She focused on the clouds of pink chi and the cultivators soon to be engulfed, actively letting go of any other thoughts lest they distract her. But she needn’t have worried.

The moment they touched the first core, she lost sight of all else. Compared to the slew of wonderful colors she’d been exposed to all morning, the birdlike humans were... gross. So dull and brown and lifeless that they made even the gray slate of the prison’s stones look vibrant.

Fischer’s overwhelming chi had surged through them like floodwater. All the veins of corruption had been washed away, but they’d left marks behind, scars in the lands that were their cores.

Maria and Slimes’s healing cloud slowed down in its expansion, yet it ever grew, one by one encompassing the other cultivators. All of them were exactly the same, their bases of power pitted and foul and imperfect. The malady afflicting them was identical, but so too was their hope.

In carving every rotten speck of corruption from their cores, the deluge had left behind exposed creek beds, unearthing the tops of enormous boulders. Most would assume these rocks to be the cause of the infection. Something that had to be removed before the great rents could be filled in. If Maria hadn’t bonded with Slimes, she might have thought the same. It may have worked, too—may have healed them.

But it wasn’t the only option. And if she and Slimes were correct, there was a better choice. One in which the boulders—the flaw within a flaw—was actually the medicine.

Her familiar’s realization last night had been like a rising sun, its rays so bright they illuminated the land and revealed this cure. Unbidden, the moment of enlightenment replayed in their minds for what had to be the hundredth time since it struck.

It began with a shared memory—their first, to be exact. The healing of Claws’s raccoon familiar.

There had been something deep within the creature, a perceived blemish that they’d tried ‘fix’ with their chi. Neither of them had known what it was. Suspecting the mystery to be of great importance, Slimes had sought to solve it, submerging himself in the waters that he used to call home. And he had gotten even more than he’d bargained for. A copy of the raccoon’s memories had been suspended within. When they’d slammed into Slimes, they brought understanding, revelation, and grief.

The ‘blemish’, the thing left behind on a whim, was the mammal’s penchant for thievery.

As with most things in life, that single word couldn’t possibly convey all the nuance needed. His larcenistic tendencies weren’t a quirk to be expunged. They were his heritage—a part of his very DNA. To their sensibilities, it was selfish. Antisocial. But he wasn’t a human. And he never would be, no matter how many awakenings or breakthroughs he experienced.

Raccoons were prey animals. There were countless creatures that would have happily turned the baby mammal into a snack. Humans, too, would hunt them. Sometimes for food, but also for no good reason at all. A memory of the raccoon and his mother being chased flashed through their minds, which they summarily dismissed. It wasn’t the time for such painful thoughts.

Despite all the claws, teeth, and human hands that wished them ill, predation was not the leading cause of death in raccoons—starvation was. They had to be sneaky. They had to steal whatever source of sustenance they could if they hoped to live past adolescence. They had to be, as Fischer had playfully called them, trash pandas.

It was why Claws’s familiar has been out at sea. Separated from his mother, starving, he’d followed the scent of food, and... well, the rest of it was a story for another day. Maria and Slimes had almost ‘healed’ this self-preservation out of him. That they’d come so close to doing so was a terrifying realization—one that had momentarily made Maria doubt if she had the right to heal anyone again, but that worry departed as fast as it had arrived.

Her will wasn’t as strong as Fischer’s, but he was a terrible baseline to compare oneself to. The man was a monster. In the best way possible, of course, but a monster nonetheless. Weak as she was by comparison, her desire to help others was powerful. Even before her breakthrough, her core had warned her not to clear the ‘blemish’ away.

And she’d listened. She could trust her instincts.

Besides, she was several orders of magnitude stronger now, so it wasn’t a valid concern. Even if it was, her familiar’s next discovery would have been enough to make her try again. Slimes, in all his glorious squishiness and occasional crystalline brilliance, had been all but certain that these cultivators were similar. He’d seen no other reason that Fischer’s flood wouldn’t have swept away their birdlike sensibilities when cleansing the corruption.

Back in the present, as Maria looked at the boulders peeking up through dry creek beds, she sent Slimes all the gratitude. She was so proud of him. The ‘flaws’ were neither something inherently bad, nor something that had to be cleansed. They were, for better or worse, a part of them now. And, when presented with the choice of having them cleansed away, their cores had declined.

If it had been one of them, maybe it should have been questioned. But all of them...? It wasn’t a mistake. It couldn’t be. Sure, wanting to be a bird was kinda unhinged, but who was Maria to judge? She had a blob of slime as a familiar. With a mental shrug, she let these thoughts slip away.

Ready? Slimes asked her, his intent seeping down into the cracks between boulder and creek bed.

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She was. With the ease of water flowing downhill, her will joined his, their tendrils of power wrapping around each porous stone.

Their healing chi, bright and pink and filled with good intentions, squeezed

***

In a place of solitude atop a rocky headland, two beings meditated, enlightenment just beyond their reach. Perhaps they shouldn’t have called it ‘solitude’, considering they weren’t actually alone. It certainly went against the standard definition. But that didn’t change their feelings on the matter.

The reasoning was as profound as it was simple; some people—or animals, in this case—were a burden on the mind. Even if you loved someone a great deal, their proximity could stop you from being able to relax. This wasn’t at all the case with these two.

They were kindred spirits. A couple of peas in a pod. Two delicious fish being swallowed down a single gullet.

That’s a terrible analogy, Pelly thought.

Really? I liked it, Bill replied.

They had progressed so far on their path to a breakthrough. That the exchange hadn’t ruined their meditative state was proof. Like a mighty pelican diving beak-first into the ocean, they slipped straight back into mindfulness, easily navigating the tides of their joined awareness.

The initial few days of seeking enlightenment had been a little more... frustrating. They’d felt on the precipice of something, and the longer it evaded them, the more agitated they both grew. But given time, this annoyance swam right by—like that one species of arrow-shaped fish that Bill still hadn’t caught despite becoming a spirit beast. He could have delivered death-from-above via flying kick, sure, but where was the sport in that?

The damned things are just so speedy...

Pelly huffed amusedly through her nostrils, which made Bill do the same. It really was a silly thing to be bothered by. He wondered if that realization would be the understanding that finally facilitated their breakthrough. So did she. It wasn’t, though. With shared mirth, they shook their heads at each other, then themselves. What was the rush?

Besides time, the recent advancements of their friends were the most pivotal reason for their lack of urgency. Each ideal was as unique as it was surprising. Cinnamon sought to deliver the perfect kick to anyone foolish enough to challenge Fischer. Maria was a healer that believed even the most-wicked could be redeemed. And Claws... okay, they weren’t all surprising. Still, they were unique, each individual’s breakthrough tied to who they were, and who they would becom—

Both pelicans sat bolt upright as a flock of chi seemed to take flight. After a single glance toward each other, Bill and Pelly rocketed skyward.

***

Sometimes, in order for healing to occur, a poorly joined bone had to be broken. With that principle held firmly in mind, neither Maria nor Slimes felt bad about the destruction they wrought. After all, the boulders weren’t boulders at all. They weren’t even stone. The thousands of thin shells turned to dust in an instant, and from the pockets hidden within, birdlike affinity poured out.

Another flood came to the lands that were the cultivators’ cores, groundwater seeping up from below to fill the scars, then flow over the sides. Rather than become submerged, however, the surrounding ground drank deep. As it rehydrated, expanded, Maria and Slimes knew they’d done the right thing.

The cores, now drenched with birdlike desire, became soft and mailable. Mountains grew, planes sank, and scars disappeared. But then the peaks folded back down, only to rise once more where a valley had been only seconds ago. In defiance of stillness, they continually shifted, endlessly searching for the correct form. There were so many options, and each argued their case, the language indecipherable yet markedly passionate.

It could have gone on forever, and it probably would have... if not for the arrival of two irrefutable opinions.

The prison felt their approach, shifting its chi to let them in. Unlike Maria and Slimes, who’d had to answer a series of questions before being admitted, the new arrivals were immediately welcomed... via the removal of a whole damned wall, its bricks tumbling down and inward to create a low barrier.

The stonework separating the rooms just... slid down and vanished, there one second and gone the next. The difference in hospitality was enough to leave Maria downright peeved. But as she returned to her body and opened her eyes, she caught sight of two feathered forms, their spread wings blocking out the midday sun.

Private Pelly and Warrant Officer Williams, floating down slowly so they didn’t disturb the joined moment of ascension, landed in the cell. With a ruffle of their feathers, both birds sat where the dividing wall had been, so close that Pelly’s brown wing brushed up against Bill’s black and white plumage.

Two masters of flight had come to give their juniors guidance.

Maria prepared to get comfy. The Church of Carcinization had been contemplating their favored form—that of the humble crab—for months, and they were yet to make the transformation. This, then, would likely take days, if not weeks. That would still be much better than how long the carcinization folk had been—

Pop!

Maria blinked, and Slimes appeared atop her shoulder, wobbling as he let out a soft oooo. Maria blinked again.

Pop! Pop! Po-po-pop!

In less time than it would take Corporal Claws to slurp down a dozen oysters, it was done. All of their cores had chosen a static shape. The only proof that anything had happened at all were the clothes a roomful of pelicans were shrugging their way out of. One of them—who’d been the human known as Tiberius—let out an indignant squawk as he got his neck and foot stuck in opposite sleeves of his tunic. The rest of the former humans, who now bore patchwork feathers of black and white and brown, croaked in amusement.

Pelly and Bill stood abruptly. The other birds fell silent, their heads whipping toward the leaders of their flight. Even Tiberius did so, having to peer up from an awkward—and objectively funny—angle given his shirt-related predicament. With the attention of everyone present, Pelly and Bill unleashed a single honk that shook the world.

It was neither pride, joy, nor enlightenment coming from them—it was all three, and much more. Their thoughts washed over Maria and Slimes as if their own.

The moment the pelicans had felt the call of the corrupted cultivators, Pelly and Bill had known what they’d been missing. It was no wonder they could cultivate together, just as it wasn’t a surprise that they hadn’t had the breakthrough yet. Of all the things they had done since awakening, it was their time herding seagulls that made them feel most alive. They’d wanted to form a squadron. A family. A group of their own with which to soar the skies and further Tropica’s goals.

Twin stars of light exploded into being. Maria crossed her arms to brace against the force, but it wasn’t meant for her. Instead of striking the subordinate pelicans, however, it flowed into them, and the now-cleansed humans drank deep. No longer did the landscapes within them remind Maria of cracked earth and floodwater.

Their cores were open skies. Endless stretches of empty space. And like a high-pressure system, Bill and Pelly’s chi rushed in to fill the void.

We... We did it, Maria thought as thick gusts of essence made the newly awakened birds feel more whole.

Slimes only vibrated back, stunned into silence for the first time since, well, ever.

It wasn’t just the healing that shocked him so. In breaking open the boulders, thereby forcing the cultivators to confront and assimilate their affinity for birdhood, Maria and Slimes had accidentally provided the very thing Pelly and Bill had been missing—a family of their own kind.

The intense joy coming from the other side of the bars could have filled oceans.

When the blinding light had been entirely absorbed, Maria opened her eyes, only to find that she still couldn’t see. She blinked away tears, wiping them from her cheek as she stepped forward. “Prison, you glorious, unhelpful bastard...” She gripped the bars, willing them to disappear. “You let me in this second. They don’t need to be contained.”

The chi-filled metal grew hot between her fingers, and the next thing Maria knew, she was stumbling forward, strands of light clinging to her body. “Thank you,” she mouthed, barely watching the light as it sloughed to the ground, pooling to create something new. Maria didn’t care what it was. She fell to her knees in front of Pelly and Bill, reaching her hands out toward them, but drew back at the last second, an unspoken question passing from her to them.

The answer came not a moment later when they chuffed in amusement and closed the distance, pressing their bodies—gods, they’d grown even bigger—into Maria. She wrapped her arms around them, her tears coming in full force. She was so, so, so proud of... them? Maria turned to the right and wiped her eyes, gazing toward the single source of fury in a room otherwise filled with positive emotions.

Tiberius had gotten even more entangled. He let out a furious grunt as he wiggled his head back and forth to no avail. Trying not to laugh, Maria reached out to help free him of his tunic, but retreated when chi glowed from his core. Tiny streams of air shot from him in every direction, tearing from his body and ripping the shirt to shreds.

Slimes shot from Maria even faster. He formed a gelatinous dome around the spirit beast, and the blades of essence dissipated as they struck it, absorbed and neutralized. Because of Maria’s breakthrough, this single attack—and all the reactions to it—confirmed several suspicions.

Pelly and Bill hadn’t just bonded with the other pelicans. They’d had a breakthrough of their own, and their connection to the others had shared the power they now wielded. Every single one of them now possessed air chi, and given time, they’d come to command it.

“Well, I’ll be...” Maria said, a few sobs taking the opportunity to escape. “Looks like we really do have an entire flock of birds now...”

There was a momentary silence, in which the pelicans looked at each other. Then, with their heads‌ held high and necks extended, the flock roared with a series of honks, guttural croaks, and even a few blasts of air. Most jubilant were Pelly and Bill, whose wings unleashed gouts of force.

Maria joined them, half-laughing, half-sobbing. The healing had been a resounding success.