Twinned Destinies: A Cultivation Progression Fantasy

// slightly changed Claudia’s appearance at end of last chapter

“This is what we’ll do. Drusila wants you to do to our warriors what you did to your Lower City,” said Claudia. “I’ll give you our scrolls, you’ll take a look, and you’ll pitch me what you want to do.”

Her head was held high,arms crossed, and though she scarcely looked older than Ruyi. She bore herself like an imitation of Lorekeeper Tyrus’s self-assured confidence, but on her it looked stiff, an ill-fitting coat.

Ruyi might not have seen all this if she hadn’t done all this herself. She felt a burst of sympathy for the girl.

“How old are you?” Ruyi asked on impulse.

Claudia stopped. “What does it matter?”

“Nothing!” she said hastily. “Just asking…”

But Ruyi could sense she’d touched a nerve. What was wrong with her? She’d always hated when the old geezers of the Guild asked her her age, like they were putting it up as a measuring stick against her skill. Sometimes when Ruyi felt like she was a dumb bear blundering through conversations breaking things, especially when she was nervous.

It was just… Ruyi sensed a kindred spirit, maybe. She knew what it was like to be a young Alchemist, and put in charge of things. She knew the weight of being talented, of feeling others’ expectations on her…. She probably shouldn’t assume these things about Claudia—she hardly knew the girl, and Ruyi was probably just putting her own hopes on her—but Ruyi got the sense they’d get along. Well, she hoped, anyways.

A difference between them showed itself instantly: Claudia’s lab was so neat it was like nobody had worked in it before. It looked like Lorekeeper Tyrus’s place, with scrolls set neatly in the beehive walls. The floors were hard-packed snow, swept clean, raked in clean lines.

They got to the center of the room—it looked a lot like the Lorekeeper’s place, but rather than a hearth in the middle, there was a cauldron. At least Ruyi thought it was a cauldron. It was clear all the way through, and shaped like a gourd. Green sludge bubbled cheerfully within.

Claudia gestured blithely, sweeping the room with an arm. “Behold! The sum total of the Frigus tribe’s Alchemy knowledge.”

She frowned at the heaps of tattered faded script. “It’s not a lot, is it? I’ll bet you had far more in your libraries over the mountains. Well, we work with what we’ve got.”

“Well…I’m sure they’re useful, in their own ways,” said Ruyi. “It’s not the quantity that matters.”

Claudia snorted. “Don’t humor me.”

She put her hands on her hips. “Truth be told half of these tomes ought to be burned. Tyrus won’t let me do it, but they’re hundreds of years out of date. I will be honest, Ruyi. If the Praetorianus are the loin, we Brewers are the shank.”

“What?”

“We’re bloody awful,” said Claudia. “They don’t give us shit—we get the least stones of anyone except the slaves. After the last skirmish with the Noctis we lost half our Elder brewers, and half our knowledge went with them. Most of us don’t can’t tell one end of a brewing rod from another. It’s bloody pathetic. Here—come with me.”

She sure liked to swear a lot. Was it because it made her seem older? Maybe Ruyi was just assuming things again.

They stepped outside and rounded the back of the tent where dozens of Brewers were hunched over their little gourd-cauldrons, coaxing up identical pools of green bubbling sloop.

They all did the thing where they pretended not to notice Ruyi and Claudia as they came around. They got all hunched and tense, and Ruyi saw the Brewers closest to them clench up so tight they mistimed their swirls. Ruyi winced—Claudia hadn’t been exaggerating… some of them really couldn’t tell one end of a rod from another, literally.

“Look at us,” said Claudia. “We try, but…” She sighed.

“There was a time the Frigus tribe knew true Alchemical art. There was a time had a corps as revered as the Inferna’s Lyceum. But…” Claudia flopped a hand at her scene. “We may as well be slaves for the warriors. We’re here to stock their bloody potions, that’s fucking it. We haven’t done anything of consequence in so long we’ve forgotten how.”

She chewed her lip.

“You can’t let this shit stand,” she said. “Tell Sabina. Or better yet—tell that old hag Drusila to give us more initiates, more stores! When we barter with the others, they have to give us new tomes. The very latest from over the border. We matter, Ruyi, you of all folk must know this! What you did with your Lower City, we can do here. We could do such great things—if they just let us.”

She seized Ruyi’s hands. Her face was very close, her big eyes breathtakingly red, and Ruyi’s mouth went dry. “You will speak with them, won’t you?”

“Yes!” said Ruyi, nodding fast. “Whatever you want.”

Claudia smiled. “Good.”

It was occurring to Ruyi that she probably shouldn’t agree to things so easily, but she’d already done it, so it was a little late now.

“Now,” said Claudia. “Let’s see what we can learn from each other.”

As it turned out, Ruyi could learn a lot.

All of Ruyi’s Alchemy was meant for human bodies. Only basic elixirs, the most surface-level of healing elixirs, reliably worked on her after her transformation—she spent most of her time brewing for others. Sometimes elixirs worked, sometimes they gave her a bad stomachache. The problem was the qi. She needed essence.

Then Claudia showed her a scroll titled, Body, Essence, and Brew, and she got it—she got it! It was as though there were ten thousand little puzzles in her brain, all missing exactly one piece, and this thing solved them all at the same time. Every few sentences, every diagram, she let out a gasp. After an hour she could close her eyes and see a map of nodes and channels ran through her human-formed body. Claudia showed her a scroll on essence and Ruyi rolled right through it. Claudia just kept feeding her, and she kept reading, and by the end of the day her head was swimming with beautiful new knowledge. At first she tried to be cool, but eventually she was bursting with so many questions she just started asking them with maybe a little more excitement than she’d intended. Claudia answered her one by one, never complaining; a few times Ruyi noticed the girl just staring at her as she read, studying her as intently as she was studying the scrolls. When Ruyi did notice it she got flustered, and it took her a few minutes to get back into it.

She felt oddly tired by the end of it, but satisfied.

“Thank you,” breathed Ruyi. “You were so helpful!”

“No,” said Claudia slowly. She blinked slowly, like she was awakening from a dream. She swallowed as she looked at Ruyi. There was a wariness there that wasn’t there before.

“You don’t know what you’ve given me,” said Claudia. “In truth… I’ve lived here all my life. In the tribe, I mean. You know what I mean. My mentor—he was the last Chief Brewer, before he got gored—he was well-meaning, and diligent but the same as me, in the end. We are frogs of the well. But you are the crane in the sky. Watching you work… watching the sorts of questions you were asking, cutting straight to the heart of the matter…”

Claudia shook her head. “It’s…the intensity, the focus, the speed, the way you make intratextual connections… it’s like I can see the lightning in your mind. I see now that I’ve never studied a text my entire life, not really. Hell. I can’t fathom how…”

She huffed. “I knew you were good. I thought I knew how good. But… fuck. It is just not the same. I suppose I had to see it. Fuck. I don’t think I’ll ever think like that—I could study the rest of my life.”

Ruyi stared at her in silence. Then she said, “Can I kiss you?” and Claudia forced a chuckle.

“I know. I must sound fake to you. It’s true, though,” said Claudia, shrugging. She seemed uncomfortable.

To Ruyi that whole outburst was astounding; she thought she’d just been reading.

She had nothing when she came over the mountains, not even herself. She hadn’t realized until now how much she needed this kind of respect until she lost it and got it again. It wasn’t a matter of wanting; it made her who she was. She got so many slow drips of it—in her dozens of letters of fan mail, at Guild meetings and in her visits to her wards—she never had to think about it most times. When she lived among humans, it was like she had this invincible cloak; and why shouldn’t she? She was Ruyi freaking Yang! She was brilliant. She was the most brilliant Alchemist who ever lived, and when she set her mind to something, nothing and nobody could stop her. Sometimes she forgot; sometimes she needed a little reminding.

When they’d first met, Claudia had been all confidence, brash, irreverent. In a way Ruyi needed the way Claudia was looking at her now—the girl looked shaken. Admiring, but… stricken, almost fearful.

“Are you okay?” said Ruyi.

Claudia swallowed. “I’ll be honest,” she said. “I shouldn’t be here.”

“Oh! Am I keeping you? I didn’t mean—”

“No, I mean, where I am. I shouldn’t be Chief Brewer.” She looked down at her clenched fists. “They gave it to me after Old Sticks passed, but only because there was no-one else worth a damn, and Felix was too old, and Diana too blind… I guess, um. Fuck.” She rattled in a breath. “I don’t even know what I’m trying to say.”

“That’s okay!” Ruyi put a hand on her shoulder but Claudia shrugged it off. “I know how you feel, really. When I was first put on the Alchemist’s Board I felt the same way. That’s—over the mountains we humans have this Board—”

“I know about the Board. I read up on you, Ruyi. You made Master before eighteen. Look, I appreciate it.” Claudia gave a weak smile. The moment of weakness had passed, and now she just seemed resigned, deflated. “But we aren’t the same. That’s how it is.”

“Oh…”

“What else can I do for you?” said Claudia. “Please. Say the word.”

What was this distance that’d opened up between them? It was in the way Claudia looked at her, in the little hesitations before she spoke. She was nervous—why was she nervous?

“I’m alright,” said Ruyi. She wanted to ask what she’d done wrong. “Do you maybe want to get dinner together?” She was still hoping they could be friends. But friends didn’t look at each other the way Claudia was looking at her.

“That’s okay. I’m not hungry. I’ll smoke and fall asleep, I think.” Claudia yawned. “The other Brewers will want to speak to you. When they heard you were coming, I promised they’d get their turn. You don’t have to take too long with them—they can’t begin to understand you. Perhaps we’ll meet tomorrow, and talk over how you plan to shape the tribe?”

“Okay…”

“Just treat me as you did your assistant,” said Claudia, smiling ruefully. “I won’t get in the way too much. I hope.”

Ruyi remembered how they’d started off—how commanding she’d been; she’d told Ruyi to pitch her a plan, hadn’t she? Maybe Ruyi should’ve felt happier they’d come to this. She was being treated with exactly as much respect as she deserved.

Before Ruyi left, Claudia said, “Goodnight, Grandmaster.”

She said it playfully, but still Ruyi flinched.

“Please,” she said. “Just Ruyi.”