Twinned Destinies: A Cultivation Progression Fantasy

She had it! Stored away and triple-locked in her fridge.

That night she tried sleeping, but she just couldn’t manage it. Her heart was beating too heavy in her chest; it kept her up. She was terribly afraid a thief might snatch the flesh in the darkness.

After an hour of tossing, she cursed, got up, marched over to the blackboards in her lab, and started plotting her metamorphosis.

She told the servants to leave food at the lab, wrote Gao to screw off for the month, and told Jin and Mother that she was not to be disturbed, even if the house were burning down. Then she ascended into a fog of shapes and colors. Only reluctantly did she descend into the physical, to eat and sleep and such; the rest of her time she was lost, trying to feel her way through the jumble of formulae.

Say she ate the finger and nothing else. All her skin would be purple-black in a week, and one body part, her Demon Limb, would be pitch black. Her eyes would turn red. Her body would grow ridges and spines, perhaps a snout and tails. Her intelligence would also be reduced to that of an infant, her instincts blown up to that of a feral beast.

The elixirs in the Tartarus Codex were meant to alleviate much of this, ease the transition from human to demon, but only in the way a medicine holds back a terminal disease. Taken weekly, they promised to preserve most of her skin and prevent the more drastic mutations in bone structure. But those ancient Alchemists had found nothing for the Demon Limb, nor the eyes, nor the mind.

She was trying to isolate the demonic effect. She spent nearly three full days swinging at the problem before she was forced to admit defeat.

There was no becoming a demon without becoming a demon, at least a little.

The question instead was—what was she willing to accept?

Red eyes were acceptable. A Demon Limb was… fine. If her body transformed, it should be nowhere too visible. No snouts. A larval-stage Demon had an infant’s mind with a wild beasts’s instincts; she was loathe to accept either. But she’d sooner compromise her instincts than her intelligence.

A week in, she had what she thought was an acceptable compromise.

An infusion of White Lotus essence ought to preserve most of her mind. And as for the eyes, she’d take Ink-eye herbs daily, and, at a pinch, use goggles. After the Tartarus elixirs did their work, whatever bodily mutations remained would have to be a matter of blind hope.

Not until she’d finished the White Lotus brew did it strike her just what she was planning on doing.

She’d taken a step, then another—the Codex, the flesh, the brews, the calculations, and now she was here. No one step, by itself, seemed monstrous. But taken together…

It was a lot, wasn’t it?

This was irreversible. She couldn’t really know what this would do. She was playing with the powers of demons, humanity’s sworn enemies! And she was fifteen. In a lab, alone. Trying to puncture the barrier between species.

Did she know what she was doing? Was she sure? Or was she lying to herself, like she so often did?

Sometimes she lied to give her courage or confidence where she had none. She lied so well she believed herself. But tell the wrong lie here, and it might be the last she ever told.

She caught a rat in the fields, calibrated a dose for its bodyweight, and fed it. Just to see. She took notes. A rat was no human, but in theory the effects should be similar.

For two days and nights the rat spasmed, screeching, clawing angry white streaks on the steel floor of its cage. Her first note was, ‘prepare painkillers.’ The second night its screeching grew so loud she thought of putting it out of its misery. When it fell still she thought it’d died at first.

Then she saw the dark splotches climbing up its left arm.

When it awoke, the entire limb was black.

As it stepped around the cage, frothing, its saliva turned to ice before it hit the ground. Frost followed its footsteps, climbed up the steel. There were dents where it lashed against the bars. Its eyes were crimson.

“It…works?” mumbled Ruyi.

She wasn’t sure why it shocked her. She’d checked and re-checked her work. But seeing it here, crawling around before her, made it uncomfortably real.

Other than the soot-black left hand, bone structure deformation seemed minimal. Even the hand could be hidden by a glove.

The cocktail had worked exactly as intended. This was no lie.

The rat spasmed in a corner of the cage, gnawing at a cow’s bone. Two bites split the thing in two. Ice crystals beaded its length.

A sudden overwhelming impulse seized her, nearly made her down the first vial. She forced herself to set it down, trembling.

“What am I doing?” she whispered.

This wouldn’t affect just her.

If this came out it’d hurt Jin, Father, Mother—Tingting. How would she possibly hide it from Tingting?

It was no small thing to make a demon from a human—no small thing at all. Was she ready for it? Was she really?

She felt like she was awakening from some mad dream. She was crashing, badly, from the theoretical to the real. She backed slowly away from the rack, from the frothing rat, her breaths quickening; the air felt heavy in her lungs; the vials glowed sinister, like poisons; “Shit,” she breathed. “Shit!” She scrambled up the ladder, away, into the open air.

She took a breath. Then another. Felt the sunlight warm on her face, saw the grasses sway in a soft wind. She felt like she’d been struck over the head.

It was so easy, cooped up in the dark, to let her mind gnaw at itself. But here in the light of day she could breathe. She walked, and she could think again.

The lab felt like another world. Things that made sense there made sense nowhere else. She stumbled back to the mansion in a daze. She happened upon Jin in the hall, trying on spiffy green robes.

If she made herself a demon, and it came out, she would never see him again. Ever. Nor Mother, nor Father, nor Tingting.

How could she risk that? How could she even think of risking that?

“Rue!” he smiled at her. “How’s the experiment going?”

“Um. Best to leave it be for now, I think,” she mumbled. Then, on impulse—“I’m really glad you’re here.”

That froze Jin. “What?” he said, flabbergasted.

“I feel like I don’t say it very often. Thanks for… being around, I guess.”

She felt like such an idiot.

“Oh. Well, thank you. What brought this on?”

“No reason.” She couldn’t meet his eyes. “What’s with the robes?”

Before he could answer—“You’re free!” It was Mother from an upstairs railing. “Thank Heavens! We’ve got no time to waste! Come, come! I’ll lend you a dress.”

“For wha—oh. Oh.”

Time had slipped by her down there. How many days had it been? Nine?

The Midsummer Banquet was tomorrow.

***

This time, she didn’t need Mother to tell her she looked wonderful. She knew it. Light blue was her color, and after a long bath her skin positively glowed.

This time she was giddy as they made their way to the palace. This time the flower-fields seemed alive with joy, the sun a pleasant companion. The cherry blossoms greeted them with a shower of petals.

This time she was eager to make her way up to the palace. She even let the footman—same one as always—carry her to the uppermost floor, no protest. She thought she knew who she’d find there, waiting for her.

The tables were already packed when they arrived. Ruyi and Jin squeezed into their seats. Tingting sat up on the dais, with the rest of the royal family, and each time Ruyi saw her it felt like some key cog in her brain fell out. This was no different. The princess was a vision in white silks.

Ruyi waved enthusiastically, but Tingling didn’t seem to see her. That was fine. There would be plenty of time later. Tingting’s eyes were fixed on her plate. They seemed rather red—had she been crying?

And who was that sat next to her?

Chen Qin. Sauve as ever in his dark silks, smiling broadly. “Why’s he up there?” she hissed.

“Don’t know,” murmured Jin.

It wasn’t just him. Duke Qin was up there too, trailing his long thin goatee, looking quite pleased with himself for no reason Ruyi could tell.

A gong echoed for silence.

“My honored guests!” said the Emperor, looking as pleased as Duke Qin. “It is, as always, a pleasure to welcome you to the four hundred and seventy-ninth annual Midsummer Banquet. Incidentally my most cherished of our holidays, a most auspicious time, yes, yes. But today is made more special still. For I have something special to announce, special indeed…”

His serene gaze drifted over the Hall; he enjoyed holding them in suspense, Ruyi could tell. And in that time a horrible premonition came upon her.

“No,” she whispered.

“My daughter, Tingting Song, is today betrothed to Young Master Qin of Crimson River Delta Province!”

“No!” But her cry was lost in the applause. They were applauding! How could they?! She tried to seek out Tingting but the princess’s eyes were fixed on her plate.

She started to rise, but a firm grip on her wrist stopped her. Mother, shaking her head. Later, she mouthed. Not now.

Was she seriously concerned about making a scene right now? Couldn’t she see what was happening? Why wasn’t someone doing something?!

Then Chen Qin picked up Tingting’s hand, and gave it a little kiss, and Ruyi nearly lost it. Only the sheer force of Mother’s grip kept her from lunging.

“That bastard!”

“Rue, please,” said Mother, desperate. “I need you to control yourself. For us—for Father.”

“Fuck Father,” Ruyi hissed. “Let me go!”

Mother only shook her head.

“I hate you,” she whispered. Tears stung at her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Mother kept saying, looking pained, like that meant anything to Ruyi.

She sat there, letting the world flow past her. She didn’t understand how this was possible—wasn’t it just weeks ago they’d had a picnic in the fields, and, kissed, and spoke of their futures?

‘Father will come around,” Tingting had said.

“At least pass me the bottle.”

Ruyi drank, and drank, and drank.