[Fanfiction] Chapter 9: Landslides

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“For the rest of your life, know that you are in my debt.”

—— Northstrider, Monarch on the Path of the Hungry Deep

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I stared at Tenth’s retreating back, eyes flickering to the breach in the script boundary she had made. The name of my Path resonated within, deep and clear. Unforgiven for my parent’s crimes, and unforgiving of the slights I had been offered. That was who I was. Am.

The Fang chittered at me, breaking my introspection. “Quick! Do you have the means to advance?!” His voice was full of panic.

I was still thinking about what she had said, but whatever the Fang had done in at the site had him worried.

I stared at the Jade. I hadn’t forgotten the existence of this tunnel, and I wondered at the Highgold’s sudden departure. I could guess at it. If my suspicions were true, then there was a very real chance that I might die today.

“You awoke the rest of the Lesser Worms,” I said, not quite a question, but a statement.

“I did.”

I glanced at the damaged script boundary, where Tent’s scythe had cut through.

I closed my eyes. The Sinda were gone for. The Lesser Worms would eventually break through the script, and when they did, the first thing they’d find would be the compound. Whatever artist that survived that, would be hunted down. The Emperor would be demanding heads on spikes… and would anybody really be looking further than the existence of the tunnel? People would be out for justice, but might as easily be satisfied with blood on the sand and the Sinda would make for great villains.

It hit me then, what the sacred rabbit had done. Not just intellectually, but gut-wrenching, viscerally.

I was fairly sure that between Jai Daishou and Eithan Aurelius this crisis could be managed, but that meant little when hundreds, if not thousands would die. Oh, First Fang.

I opened my eyes staring at the Jade. “Why?”

“She wouldn’t have let us go. You know that!”

“That is not what I was asking, and you know it!”

The Fang’s ears swiveled. I stared at the entrance to the site, which for now remained dark and empty.”Little kit, you have to advance now. An Iron might make it back in time before the script ruptures, but a Copper will die.”

There was a wisdom in that, I conceded. I would advance, and then I would ask him questions. I pulled my brown robes off my body, discarding them in a pile far away. This would be a mess. I strolled further away from my clothes, naked, holding the scripted glass jar of Searing Salt above me.

“When the pain becomes too much…you will know.”

I poured the salt at my feet and a pink cloud enveloped me in seconds. I grit my teeth, the sensation of hungry ants chewing through my skin and bones ignored as I got on my knees and began to cycle.

If I hadn’t been brushed with the saliva of a Streamstrider Carp, I might have fainted. A breath, and madra entered my body in the Slow Drip.

Madra alone wasn’t the only thing to be entering my body. A single breath had the pink fumes moving down my throat and I choked. My right eye blinked and my left hand was twitched; the pain I could handle, but the chock it was almost too much. On top of that the cycling was by itself no small feat to hold.

I formed a fist with my hand and kept my left eye open. The madra moved in the pathways formed by the Sourlake Fruit and now I understood why this was the last step, and not the first. Without the attenuation process, the burning saliva and the acidic juice, I wouldn’t have been able handle this.

I took a second breath, tempering myself from within as from outside. Black Iron had it that Ren Souken lasted for a full fifteen heartbeats, but surely that must be a tale that had grown in telling.

A third heartbeat, a third swallow and I screamed, though not for long.

The Slow Drip! The Slow Drip! The Slow Drip!

The chant kept me through another two heartbeats, but I was burning alive. My eyes refused to stay open and I lay pitched forward, my head against the ground in a mockery of the traditional cycling stance. The legends said that the madra of the Blackflames had that effect on their bodies; if so, then they were more crazy than I had ever thought.

Two more heartbeats and I was crying, fat drops of salt forcing their way through the broken portals that was my eyes. There was pain in the world, a sensation to make children weep and the elderly stumble; I was feeling that now.

“The kit of Sinda Zhou should not be this weak,” the Fang spoke. He spoke the words like a truth; as the Overlord stands over the Underlords, as the sun rises only to fall and the only love a sacred artist has is advancement. They were not mocking and that was perhaps the most damning thing.

My mother had reached Underlady on her own, found those rarefied insights that turned Gold into Lord without help and her peers bowed before her. She had married my father out of love, and though the Elders at the time had protested, they’d no choice to bow before her power.

And here I was, not even Iron and I was flinching.

Half a heartbeat passed and I stood up, voice breaking, legs trembling as madra channels formed inside my body. I had told Tenth I would not forgive her, claimed the conceit as my Path, but the truth I could admit now, as my heart struggled to push blood through through a body that was more charcoal was this: I could not forgive myself.

The heartbeat passed and I locked eyes with the Fang.

It had taken Adzei’s maiming to realise that the Matriarch would never let me claim a Path for my own, and in this I had to thank him. A couple of fingers was a small price to pay for a truth that would set me free.

I fell backwards with intent, rolling out of the cloud that Searing Salt had made. Souken had called it a “baptisal for the ages,” which was something of misnomer, if there ever was one.

Unseeing, unhearing and unknowing I spoke.

“I need earth madra. Now!”

Nothing happened.

Then-

Potent madra of a density far beyond Copper flowed through my and I cycled the madra through channels that felt more expansive, through a body that was flaking and disintegrating.

I screamed-

-and when I blinked I found myself in a coffin of filth. I struggled to think. Blood, vomit, and the rest of expelled impurities had formed a crust that now encased me.

A rough sound, as loud as fireworks in my ears drew my eyes to the right. I vaulted high, hitting the upper end of the Fang’s artificial cave and descended before I realised what I had done.

I was Iron; and the boundary was under attack. The term for these sacred beasts was apt. Worms. They had the form of cylinders, if those cylinders were tan with mouths to make… in an abandoned menagerie of the compound since long forgotten there was a skeleton of a sacred beast that reminded me of those mouths: sharks.

Two sets of eyes on either side of cone-shaped heads tracked us as dozens of beasts surged against the script wall. The scripts flickered with light and I shook; I rolled the muscles of my feet, noticing how the ground broke beneath my toes.

I glanced at the wall next to me…my eyes were not on the same height as I had expected. Was I actually taller now?

This was the Enameled Iron body. I cycled earth madra in the Maimed Hand, sending the imprint of my hand drilling into opposite wall. Iron had a certain heft to it.

I closed my eyes, feeling Iron madra flow through my body, denser and thicker, yet and I knew that this was nothing in comparison to Lowgold or even Truegold madra.

“Come now! We move for the compound!”

He didn’t have to tell me; the scripts had begun to produce a keening sound like a tea pot.

The Fang cycled his own Stone Fortress and ran. I followed, feeling the difference in my Enforcer technique almost immediately. With each step I almost flowed over the ground, and several times my head struck the ceiling.

I put one foot before the other, stumbling, even under the influence of the Stone Fortress. Still. I felt a solidity that I had not yet felt as Copper. My body was superhuman now.

So, this was Iron. A new body, a body that would take me to Truegold. In my mind’s eye my core seemed bigger, yet not as big as I had expected.

Part of it was in due to the process of the Enameled Iron body. It took a “piece” of my core’s madra and “invested” it in my body. My body was denser and stronger than it had been previously. Just Enforcing myself naturally would make me tough enough to shrug of fists and breaths of Striker techniques now.

But, I smiled, thinking as we picked up the pace, if one already had an Enforcer technique that made the body more enduring?

I flooded my body with as much madra as the Slow Drip would allow me and pushed.

___

It had taken half a day for us to reach the entrance to the site; pushing my Iron body to its limit we made it in four hours, though I wished it could have been done faster.

“Here we part,” the Fang noted, distractedly.

“Not yet,” I said. I crouched before the Jade, meeting his eyes. “I am owed answers. Why was there a tunnel to the Highworm’s lair? And why did you wake the rest of the Lesser Worms?”

The Fang’s ears flatted against his skull. That I knew was a move of aggression but we were beyond that. “The city is boiling, kit. I can feel the power of Lords blazing, which means that the city truly is in danger.” Unsaid went the fact that the Arelius and the Jai wouldn’t work together for anything less than a complete catastrophe.

“Speak,” I declared, unmoved, unforgiving. I met the elder rabbit’s eyes, and he was the first to look away.

“Your mother… she saved me when I left the Den for the city once, so long ago. It is how we first met. As she rose among the ranks of the clan she would come down to meet me, and we would talk, one young leader to another. Then…”

The Fang twitched, repressing emotion.

“…then they executed her. I understand that by human standards she committed a great crime. But she was my friend, a friend to the Den and when the Empress executed her I was there.”

I blinked. I hadn’t known that.

“As the sword came swinging down, I promised her two things little kit.” The Fang raised one paw. “The destruction of the Sinda.”

He raised the right. “To safeguard you.”

I shook my head, still trying to absorb his words. “The Worms will not stop with the Sinda. They will spread over the Serpent’s Grave. Besides,” I recanted, working my way through the implications of what the elder rabbit had said,”there are children among the sect who are blameless.”

If my upbringing, or the lack of it for one had taught me something, it was this: children are, were and should never be held responsible for the mistake of their elders.

What my peers had done to me, the First Fang was doing to the entire sect, but only a wholly unimaginable scale.

“I will not band words with you, not when I am right.” He bowed, executing a sacred artist’s salute. “Run little kit, run before the Worms get you!”

I blinked, and when I opened my eyes he was gone. Where… where had he gone?

I focused my Iron ears, and though I could hear the scurrying of rabbits and the slow slither of pythons in background, the Jade was nowhere.

I grit my teeth. I would have words with him, one day. But for now, I made my way up to the surface.

____

The compound was frothing. An old cloudship was rising at the center and the Irons and Jades of the sect were ushered like cattle there. Lowgolds and above were running back and forth, their Goldsigns twisting in the air.

The Elders were screaming about art and the Matriarch herself sat on a Thousand Mile Cloud, listening and dispensing with advice. Really, when you needed things organised, where were the Arelius?

I made for the Forgotten Courtyard, where Mifen waited. “Where have you been?!” She hugged me and if I hadn’t been Iron, I would have been bruised.

She frowned, and something passed through me, an errant scan. “Iron?”

“Iron,” I confirmed. I cycled the Stone Fortress and flung one of the stone benches over a wall.

She nodded, clapping her hands appreciately. “What does it do?”

There were stories about sacred artist giving up the secrets of their Iron bodies only to have a rival seize on those very weaknesses, but I didn’t think that Mifen was one of those.

“Makes me more endurable. Tougher, a bit stronger.”

“When-“ In the background a trumpet rose, a clarion call. It came not from the compound, but I thought, from Shiryuu Mountain.

“What’s that about?” I made sure that I was giving nothing away. I hadn’t damaged the script boundary nor had I been the one to wake the Worms, but something told me the Skysworn wouldn’t be that understanding.

“The Elders called for the sect to muster, the full sect. We’re fleeing.”

“Fleeing? From what?”

“Nobody knows, but whatever it is, it has has the Lords spoked. Jai Daishou himself supposedly was by to talk to the Matriarch!”

That made certain sense; the Lords of Serpent’s Grave wouldn’t move for anything less than a natural disaster, and this certainly was a disaster.

I scurried through through the pavillion, gathering what few items of value I had: a badge of Jade, that once belonged to my father, a wristguard with a light-based binding, worn by mother through the stages of Gold, some miscellaneous things I had found during my years.

Less than a rucksack’s worth of things, in total. The Worms might tear the compound apart, but I wouldn’t miss it. My eyes followed the outline of the room, the worn sheets, the webs and the imprint of my feet, left in the dust.

The Worms could have the compound. I would build a new one, one day. “Go,” I told Mifen, my back still turned. “I will join you,” I lied.

“Don’t be late! The Matriarch will wait, but not for long!”

I waited, making sure that I could no longer hear the sound of her breathing as her steps receded into the distance.

I sat on the worn floor, and thought. I had a choice here.

The compound would be evacuated, the region swarmed by sacred beasts. The Skysworn would be out in force, not to catch criminals, but to ensure the writ of the Empire remained sancrosanct.

If there was a time for an Iron to make his way, it would be now. Oh, I would be constrained by my lack of advancement, but there were cities, archives, libraries even where I could lose myself.

The Matriarch and the Skysworn, Gai and Ai Sarazu would ask questions. Mifen, I realised with a heartfelt pang. But for the greater majority of the sect I’d just be a criminal Copper. Most would count me dead, a Remnant in the wind.

Or, I could stay. What was my future with the Sinda, then? What was I staying for?

I gazed down at the hand for which I had named the Striker technique on the Path of the Unforgiven. I had thought of it before, but in a sense I was grateful for what Adzei had done to me. He’d set me free. I had been caught in a trap of my own making, where I was content to go no nowhere, to remain at the shallow shores of the Foundation stage.

But that trap was wider than I thought. While I remained with the Sinda I would always be constrained. Stopped from advancing properly yet always seen with suspicion as I did. Seen from another angle, I was safe here. They’d grudge me a Path, but now that I actually had one, they would never encourage me to develop it. A maze of many angles that informed my decision.

I grabbed my bag and went. I moved through the empty corridors of the compound, noticing with distaste all the dirt the evacuation had stirred loose, avoiding the few Elders left and opened one of the doors to the compound.

Curious. Sunlight spilled across my frame…and I had wondered about that, wondered what it would be like to be free to walk unhindered through Serpent’s Grave.

And now, as I made my way through the city, seeing the befuddled citizens run like chickens, I couldn’t appreciate it.

I was experiencing a strange detachment- I thought, quite amused, that maybe I wasn’t panicking for what the average sacred artist was feeling right now was something I had dealt with my entire life.

A man with the wheat color of the Arelius marched up to me, stopping at a polite distance, a shining Goldsign raised in greeting. I made a salute with my fists and bowed as low as I could. I stood before Cassius Arelius, who would have been the heir presumptive to one of the great clans, if not for a whim of fate. I looked at his blue robes, the birthright of a man who would expect nothing less than his due.

Would that have been me, for another whim of fate? I tried, and failed to summon a scenario in my head where the Sinda were still ascendant, where I, the only child of two Lords, stood at the forefront. My Goldsign would be that feathered mantle that Sarazu had ridiculed, my robes of red and green. Would I have been as proud as the second strongest Highgold in the Empire, I wondered…

My eyes, still so sensitive after advancing, were drawn to the noises coming from behind him. Between an alley created by two draconic wristbones, a column of refugees strode, children and Coppers crying, carried by forlorn parents.

At the head of the train stood a woman with wings; one green, the other the color of oranges.

“There is space for you, should you seek refuge,” Cassius Arelius said, having seen my glance. I bowed yet again. Here too lay a choice. I could lose myself among the refuges, an Iron without name, or sect.

But…

I moved to the side and bowed a third time.”I will find my own way,” I responded, eyes downcast in the presence of a Highgold as only proper of my stature in the Blackflame Empire.

The Arelius nodded and continued walking, the train soon following. I had told the Fang that he was complicit in the deaths of innocent, that he had authored the destruction of the livelihoods of people who had nothing to do with his vengeance and now I saw it.

An old woman, Lowgold atleast, was carrying two small children on her shoulders, singing a tune about bubbly Remnants.

A little girl, as old as Mifen and my stage, was tugging on the sleeve of her older brother, asking loudly, where they were going and why.

A proud Gold walked at the center of the train, his eyes attentive and his mien strong, until one saw his right hand, shaking.

The sect’s Elders might deserve what they were getting, for I couldn’t forgive them for killing my parents, even though they had been criminals, but these people had nothing to do with the Fang’s revenge.

We never really get what we deserve, do we?

The caravan went one one way, and I went towards a location in Serpent’s Grave I had memorised.

A great claw of white bone thrust into the sky, cloudships landing on its seven digits and as I strode up its incline, I prepared my arguments.

The smallest digit had the infamous Horror Hunter moored at its peak and as I made my way to it, I saw that one artist was trying to lift a huge packet.

I couldn’t make out the artist beyond the three ornate boxes carried, but the hands were scarred, the nails chipped.

I cycled the Stone Fortress and helped her lift the boxes. Brown eyes gazed dismissively at me. She wasn’t much older me, but her sacred artist robe was of sturdy grey-green with a black cloth belt, and her Goldsign, a cerulean diamond, pulsed with inner light.

“I suppose you’d want passage from Serpent’s Grave?”

“Indeed. Might I be able to talk to the owner of this vessel?”

She gave nothing away, and yet I knew myself to have blundered.”You are the owner?”

She didn’t respond, simply stared at me. Well, in less than a day I had been threatened with death, advanced to Iron and I had been part of creating the kind of disaster the dream-readers made tablets of. Let her stare.

“I wouldn’t take much space, and though I have no scales to pay with, I would be more than willing to have help.”

“Listen here you, Iron-“ CRACK.

I saw it at the edge of my vision.

The compound, my home of sixteen years, simply vanished. I opened my Copper eyes, seeing waves of earth aura the size of Shiryuu Mountain ripple in the far distance.

That…no Truegold, not even a hundred Truegolds could bring such a force to bear. But a Lord might. A Lord-stage sacred beast could. I swallowed.

I turned to the owner. “Please!”

She nodded, to distracted to voice a complaint. Her words were rote. “You will work for your food, and I don’t want complaints.”

If she had asked me for the rest of my fingers on my left hand I might just have given it to her. The Highworm was awake and judging by the way of aura, it was coming to Serpent’s Grave.

Submitted February 09, 2019 at 12:55PM by SebastianLindblad http://bit.ly/2BsDiKy