Pixie, Meet K Jones

Pixie stepped into her mirror, a stoic expression plastered on her face. The bright heather strands of hair blew around her due to the force of the spatial tempest as she travelled toward her destination, painting the image of a gentle tree with graceful swaying branches.

'K's Collection of Artistic Oddities... I wonder what it's like. What kind of artworks will be there?'

She had her arms folded behind her, but took one hand and used it to feel her heartbeat. Sighing, she said to herself, "I'm getting excited. I need to calm myself."

She immediately begun breathing in a certain rhythm, a technique her parents taught her. This caused her to think about them and wonder how they would react if they knew of the choice she made. She had made the choice, and now there was no turning back. Opinions could be changed, but her Dao could not.

Finally, she achieved an acceptable level of calm. This could not happen at a better time, as the spatial tempest had just come to an end and she arrived at her destination. Stepping forward, her surroundings morphed into a well-lit area.

Her shoes tapped against the smooth marble, causing a percussive beat to echo throughout the space. The minute she stopped blinking rapidly and her eyes somewhat adjusted, she saw something directly in front of her. Only, she saw it much too late.

She walked into something solid, but it immediately gave way and started falling over. Now, she could see that she had knocked over a white stone pedestal atop which was a polished, silver colored figure. Instantly, she gasped and tried to circulate her energy...

She had no cultivation, thus she could do nothing. In that instant, she felt a nip on her heart due to the pain. She had barely even observed the figure, but she knew it was a priceless work of art.

When the smashing sound didn't come, she opened her eyes and saw something that made her gasp yet again.

Standing on the other side of the still swaying pedestal was a young man, no older than twenty, with smooth skin and a thin circle beard. Long and thick black hairs fell to his ears, hiding them from her sight. In his eyes, she saw a sparkling pink flitter past before revealing the dazzling blue behind it.

He was wearing a vest, once white but now stained with all manner of things from paint to dust to soot, and long black pants. Pixie saw the hue of his skin and was temporarily mesmerized. Such a shade of brown was something she had rarely ever seen, thus the encounter with this young man reminded her of the possibility.

"Careful, miss. Mister Ptah's Silver Personage is something near and dear to his and my hearts. He would be furious; I would be ashamed."

The young man stopped looking at Pixie, releasing her from captivation. He placed the figure back onto the pedestal with one hand, shifted it about and, once he was sure it was fixed, returned his focus to her.

"Apologies, miss. I did not mean to startle you."

Keeping one hand behind his back, his right, he reached out for her to take his hand, then shook it.

"I am K Jones, and this is my art gallery. But, you already knew that bit."

"Mm. I'm here because I chose to follow my own Dao."

K's eyes widened and his mouth fell open just a crack, but he recovered and closed it, smiling with his eyes. "How lovely. I haven't had a single visitor in all of the Infinite Expanses for twenty thousand years. You can imagine how hopeless that can make this all seem."

Pixie shook her head, "Hopeless? If you ask me, that makes it seem all the more precious."

She glanced around, truly taking in the grandeur of K's collection.

"A treasure," she slowly said, "is not valuable because it is desired. It is valuable because-"

"...it is hardly ever found..."

K finished her sentence, causing her to glance at him in puzzlement. He, too, seemed amazed by the fact that she spoke those words.

"How did you know?" Pixie took a step back in his direction, curious light in her eyes.

"I could ask you the same thing. My grandfather, Thadeo, always spoke those exact words back then. I can't tell you how many times he used it to drill the meaning of art into my head. Lost cause, but he was that kind of insane..."

K still had not removed his right arm from behind him, intriguing Pixie.

"Why is it that you're hiding your right hand? Is there something about it that embarrasses you?"

K was caught off guard, and coughed before saying, "It's a long story- something of an Epic, really. Like the Epic of Gilgamesh, a true work of art. But not as good, of course."

"The Epic of Gilgamesh?"

Pixie was led by K to a display case, large and made of a material like glass, only infinitely more durable. Within it were cuneiform tablets, broken but pieced together both gently and expertly. Pixie could not read it, but she did not need to. As she looked at it, she felt a kingly aura and presence that could not compare to any of the kings, emperors, leaders of sovereigns that she had ever seen in her short life.

She could instantly feel the weight of each written word, and the power that those words denoted. In a short instant, she had experienced the weight of the story through nothing more than her meager divine will. It was overwhelming.

It was true art.

"It tells of Gilgamesh, half-man-half-divine- the king who did not wish to die- and Enkidu, the man created to curb Gilgamesh that instead becomes his closest friend. The stories are legendary, or something like that at least."

Pixie nodded, looking at K with interest. 'He compared his story to it, so perhaps...'

"So, what of your right hand? Will you tell me your story? I do have the time."

K laughed, somewhat embarrassed, then cleared his throat. He looked around for a minute, sighed, then made a gesture with his hand. "I rejected someone's offer to construct some chairs a while ago; it seems we will have to sit on the floor."

Pixie had already taken a seat before he could finish, and so he chuckled and sat as well. They were both seated before the display case containing the tablets, only a few feet apart.

"My story begins on a world far from here, small and irrelevant, but my home. My grandfather's story begins elsewhere, on a different planet to be precise."

"Planet?" Pixie was confused, since this was not the terminology used in the Thirteenth Void, which was the dimension the Qin Realm used to exist in.

"Ah, you would call it either a domain or a realm, I think."

"So a planet is a realm? And a domain too?"

"Exactly, they're all the same. I am from the planet called 'Earth,' my grandfather was from the planet Llotro."

Pixie nodded slowly, "So... Earth Realm and Llotro Realm?"

"Correct. Llotro was a world unlike most, consisting entirely of powerful magic gems. The people that lived there were in constant torment, suffering due to the environmental changes those gems caused."

"How did the diamonds get there? Where they always there, or did they show up at some point?"

"Neither, but also both. The gems were always there, but they were not as powerful. They were experimented on by those very people because they did possess scant traces of magical energy, but their work only made it worse. They provided those gems with the stimuli they needed to awaken from a deep slumber, and they regrew their consciousness."

Pixie said nothing. She listened to K as he fell into the story, and took something out of her spatial ring. It was a notepad and a pen, something Pixie had to experiment with herself for quite a while before she figured out how to use it. She recorded his words as he said them, making little notes and jotting down tiny thoughts whenever they came to her.

"Eventually, my grandfather figured out how to make use of the gems to strengthen himself, but that method worked for no one else.... He learned that the core of the planet served as the brain for the gems... My grandfather singlehandedly destroyed the planet after a successful evacuation, but could not foresee what would come next..."

K's grandfather, Thadeo Jones, had eliminated the core of the planet. Even so, the gems were not helpless without it. Fragments found their way onto the fleeing starship upon which were the survivors of Llotro. They were all killed.

"That's just awful..."

"All he had left of his home was a dormant fragment of the core. With it as a reminder, he journeyed the cosmos and found my home. It took him a while, but he settled there and had a family, but not before he could have countless adventures of his own. He rediscovered some semblance of happiness, and was proud of the life he had here."

Pixie laughed as she listened to tales of Thadeo and his son, K's father. They journeyed the snowy peaks, crushing depths and scorching hells of Earth. Finally, K was born.

"My birth changed everything, for me and my grandfather. The day I was born, he was at home. As soon as I left my mother's womb, the fragment of Llotro came alive and tore itself away from him. He chased after it, but it was too fast."

"It attached itself to my right hand," K removed his hand from behind him, showing off a sizable piece of a purple gem embedded in the back of his hand.

"Nothing he tried could remove it, not even severing my hand, which he tried. He also tried severing the entire arm, but the gem would always undo the damage instantly after. He could not bear seeing it attached to me. Something that reminded him of a dark past, tethered to something that was meant to inspire him to hope for a brighter future."

"It almost drove him insane, that he couldn't remove it, but he eventually gave up. In his latter days, he discovered his truest passion: painting. Having seen all there was to see in my world, he had no shortage of things to paint. It was that discovery that caused him to be chosen by the Final Moon Father and the Empress of the Thirteenth Void. His art gained him a place amongst the greatest in the Mythical Realm, even though his strength could not compare."

"It may not have been able to compare," Pixie added, "but his Dao could. His art stood on equal ground with theirs. That is no easy feat."

K smiled, only then noticing the notepad she had been writing in.

"Trying to turn my story into its very own Epic? The Epic of K, then," he joked.

"Exactly that," Pixie replied, expression somber.

"Heh, well good luck with that. I'm meant to be showing you around, but here I am telling you my story."

"I did ask." Pixie saw that he was standing up, so she followed and dusted herself off. K motioned for her to follow him, and then he started his tour of the art gallery. There were paintings on the walls, display cases and pedestals with sculptures, scripts, assembled bones and various other things. There were even items built from very tiny plastic blocks.

"You never did tell me whose student you are. Let me guess: Hephaestus?"

Pixie shook her head.

"Actually, my master is Logean Wuji."