Chapter 38: Ashe
Everyone makes the mistake of assuming that the unification of the major powers was some sort of powerful, peaceful historic event. None of them were. One and all, except for maybe Volkar who has no record of its own unification, the uniting of all the powers were long, bloody conquests that ended with the powers grasped in the bloody fists of tyrant rulers.
Excerpt: Histories of Athin, Xeros Vanta
It took a few more hours for the trio to make it into the Order proper, reaching the first of the Order’s city’s. During that time, Erin had elected to educate and warn the other two about a few things that they would be expected to know and adhere to, lest they make a mistake that would irrevocably offend someone important, or someone related to an important person.
Firstly, Erin began by explaining that the mortals of the Order, like everywhere else, were just going to be normal people. But, having grown up in a place where they’re constantly considered lesser for not pursuing cultivation and punished for speaking up against the Cultivators, they were going to be far less friendly with people that were powerful, even if said people weren’t actually cultivators. Sammath immediately began to try and rant about how that wasn’t fair and interject his opinions about how they should be treated but Erin, having already predicted Sammath’s spiel and knowing that he wouldn’t stop if he got going, had quietened him almost precognitively.
“No. Don’t start that here, Sammath. This is not the time or the place. The Order’s culture is almost the direct opposite of Volkar’s, much as they might say the School is their antithesis, and I understand that the dichotomy will come as a culture shock but you do not get to go around telling other people how to live their lives. The Order is not your country, Sammath, and it is not your job to change it because, and let me get this through your thick skull, this isn’t your culture. You are a guest in the Order, a tourist, and how would you feel if someone from the Order came to Volkar and started telling you how to live your life?”
With Sammath’s head bowed and the Volkarian effectively quietened as he contemplated Erin’s words, she continued, “While you may see the treatment of the mortals by Cultivators as barbaric and backwards and think it’s unfair, it is not. Much as mortals are second class citizens here, with less social status and importance than Cultivators, they have their place in the order and are, more often than not, freer than Cultivators. Yes, Cultivators look down upon mortals and often will treat them poorly. Cultivators will degrade and verbally abuse mortal but none of the mortals actually care. To them, that’s just the way of the world and all of them grow up expecting that from the Cultivators. Anyone that works directly for a Cultivator expects and experiences more of it than any other person.
“But with the downside of their status comes many benefits. In the Order, there is less crime committed down Stages than any other power except Volkar. While the mortals may be insulted and degraded, for them to be even slapped, hit, punched, or even touched by a Cultivator is extremely rare. Not only is it illegal for a Cultivator to harm a mortal, punishable by having their cultivation crippled, more importantly, it’s a social crime. If you hit a mortal, you will be ostracised and shunned by everyone around you, including your closest friends and family. You are considered scum and are practically exiled from society. The suicide rate of people convicted of hitting mortals is over 90%. In fact the few cultivators who stop mortal crimes will often choose to stand their and let the mortal hit them to stop the crime rather than prevent the mortal from acting in the first place. The mortals who work for cultivators, while receiving the brunt of the verbal degradation, are also in a position to gain much. If they do well at their job, their children or family members can be raised as a cultivator and inducted into a sect.
“Mortals also follow different laws that give them far more freedom than Cultivators do. What might be punishable by death for a Cultivator could result in a simple fine for mortals. Cultivators aren’t allowed to leave their sects to roam around the lands without special permission because, even once they are powerful enough to do so without any repercussions, they have responsibilities locking them down but mortals are free to roam wherever they like. Mortals can pursue careers and have jobs, they can pursue their passions, while Cultivators must continue to push until they either die trying, cripple themselves, or they reach the Fourth Stage, which they call the Aspect Stage, before they can even choose to start learning a profession like smithing or alchemy.
“Any mortal who doesn’t want to be in the sects is free to leave but many choose to stay because, to them, the benefits outweigh the downsides. You can’t try and look at the Order’s culture from the same lens as your own Volkarian ideals because anything you see is wrong. The Order may not treat mortals and Cultivators the same but they are treated well by the governing body of Cultivators. Most of the mistreatment that mortals face comes from the stupid arrogance of youth, idiots who weren’t actually powerful enough to affect anything in the sects, and people who are angry that are taking their emotions out somewhere else.
“Anyone powerful enough to actually affect anything knows that they need mortals. That’s why you’ll often see people working for Sect elders and more powerful Cultivators being treated better than less powerful Cultivators. If the Cultivators didn’t have the mortals who were willing to work the fields, willing to blow glass, willing to labour and sweat and bleed for the money that the Cultivators can provide – if the mortals wanted to rise up and protest – the entire Order would grind to a halt as the privileged Cultivators struggle and fail to feed or shelter themselves. Normal people in the Order may not have the overwhelming physical or magical power as Cultivators but their social power is more than enough to terrify Cultivators, at least those smart enough to realise the power, into treating them well.”
“So, Sammath. When you see people being yelled at and threatened, when you see stupid teenagers posturing to some mortal shopkeep just trying to get by, you shouldn’t act. The mortals know their value and they know what may happen to them but they know that, at the end of the day, they’re going to be fine and the Cultivator will be the one facing any punishment that might happen.”
Sammath hadn’t responded to that but Ashe had made sure to keep an eye on his face. It had looked like he was waging a war with himself internally, trying to just accept that the Order was going to be extremely, painfully different from what he was used to. As it turned out, Erin’s warning to Sammath had been extremely well-founded.
As soon as they reached the city, which was guarded by some mortal guards, the three of them fell into line behind the people that were queueing to enter the city. While they were in line, a group of three young men, jostling each other and laughing, strode past the line and right up to the gate. Wearing white martial arts robes with green trims, two of the three young men had their hair tied back in long ponytails, though the third had no need for one with his short, spiky hair.
One and all, they had flawless, olive skin, brown eyes of ranging from a light, dirt brown to rain soaked soil, and they walked with an arrogance that Ashe had seen in Shinian nobility.
Sammath, instinctively, stepped forward to try and protest but Erin, slamming her arm across his chest, stopped him from moving any farther.
Sammath immediately looked towards Erin, a frown on his face, but the girl just shook her head. Ashe chose that moment to speak up, “She’s right, Sammath. We don’t have any support network here. We don’t know who they are or what kind of support they might have. There’s nothing we can do that wouldn’t end our journey early. As it is, I’m going to have to be very careful with feeding Cab.”
“But… I can’t just do nothing.”
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“You can and you will.” Erin’s voice was harder than stone.
Even if Sammath had decided to do something then, though, it would have been too late. By the time he seemed to come to grips with doing nothing and just letting the Cultivators barge to the front of the line, the guards had already let them pass through the gate, into the city. Sammath sighed, his shoulders slumping, and Ashe gave the older boy a pat on the back, reaching up in order to actually get his back.
Erin’s impassive gaze remained on her face even as she saw Ashe comforting the boy. Ashe focussed on looking around the city’s wall as they moved forward, though. Similar to Arikar’s walls and made with functionality in mind, the wall did sport some differences that Ashe could spot. Firstly, it seemed like they worked the stone in different ways; where Arikar’s walls seemed almost like a large deposit of stone, likely created through the use of a Bloodline that Erin would surely know, the walls of the Order’s city seemed more like different pieces of stone had been melded together, the grain of the walls’ stone not quite flowing fluidly. There were also some differences in crenelation design; in Arikar, merlons, the pieces of stone sticking over the top of the wall to protect defenders from projectiles, tended to be square and had a slight lip with embrasures, the gaps between the merlons, roughly the same size as the merlons themselves. In the Order, however, the merlons seemed to be longer and were more of a rectangular shape, with thinner embrasures, at least compared to the size of the merlons.
Both of those defensive terms were things that Ashe had learnt during the last few months. As they got closer to the wall, Ashe found himself looking at the guards and taking in their armour and weapons, which differed from Arikar’s. Arikar had three main forms of armour; lighter leather armour that was often studded with metal in strategic locations, chainmail armour that offered better protection but was heavier and louder, and full-plate armour that heavily restricted movement but was extremely protective, at least compared to other forms of armour. On the other hand, the guards at the gate were wearing none of those three types of armour. Instead, they wore something that seemed somewhere in between chainmail and plate armour, with small, overlapping, rectangular plates cascading down their body that were almost reminiscent of scales. Their helmet was more open than those of Arikar’s, without a nose plate, but followed the same idea of covering the entire head and a small protrusion came down, between the brows.
Where Arikar tended to have pants made from armour, the Order’s plate-like armour, which Ashe didn’t actually know the name of, didn’t seem conducive to pants and skirts, plated from the same material, hung down to about knee height and a set of greaves protected the soldiers’ shins. Like Arikar, the soldiers seemed to use spears as their primary weapon and a leaf-shaped blade of steel topped the long, wooden poles. As the group stepped up to the guards, Erin brandished their travel papers, and the guards inspected the documents.
One of them said something to the other guard in the Heavenly Tongue, causing him to laugh, and Erin responded, the look on her face able to freeze steel. Clearly, her gaze made the guards nervous as they immediately hurried to do their jobs, one of them sticking their hand out for Erin to pay an entrance fee to the city and Erin promptly handed over a number of octagonal copper – or bronze – coins. Ashe didn’t get a very good look at the coins, but he could see there was a hole punched through the middle of them.
With that, they were let through into the city. Passing through the gates, underneath the massive, spiked, steel grate that was supported above them inside the wall, Ashe found himself staring all around him as they entered the city. More reminiscent of Shinian architecture than Arikaran, the Order’s buildings seemed to utilise sloping, curved rooves where Arikar’s were straight. Additionally, Arikar seemed to make more use of cobbled stones, particularly in the foundation of buildings, where the Order seemed to use some sort of white concrete for foundations and used red-painted – or stained – wood on top of the concrete for second or even third stories on the buildings.
Most people seemed to wear simple but well-made clothing, woven from something similar to Arikaran clothes, that hung loosely on their frames. They were somewhere in between the martial arts robes that the members of the Sects seemed to wear and the shirt or tunic and pants that people from Arikar wore. Every so often, though, Ashe managed to catch a flash of colour – oranges, greens, blues, and reds were the most prevalent colours – from clothing that someone a little more well off than the normal citizens wore. Preoccupied with looking around, taking in all of the banners, the bustling people, and his hearing overwhelmed by all of the people talking in a foreign tongue, though, Ashe didn’t notice as he walked into a small bubble of empty space around two young men.
Erin’s hand grabbed onto Ashe’s shoulder, stopping him from walking any further, but it was too late to escape notice. Wearing the green-trimmed, martial arts uniform that Ashe had figured was from the sects, both of the young men turned to glare at Ashe. With long black hair, tied behind their head in a loose ponytail, and vibrant green eyes, the young mens’ flawless, pale skin stood out. Speaking loudly and quickly, Ashe could hear the undercurrent of anger in their voice but couldn’t understand their words, so he just blinked at them blankly. Clearly, they thought that he understood the Heavenly Tongue which, considering the physical similarities between the people of the Order and those of Shinia, was understandable.
Ashe opened his mouth to speak but Erin suddenly increased the pressure on his shoulder, so he closed his mouth. Erin stepped forward, out of the crowd, instead and Ashe could see the boys forget about him near instantly as they took in the, admittedly, beautiful woman. Bowing lightly to the boys, Erin said something in the Heavenly Tongue that Ashe presumed was some sort of apology. The two Cultivators shared a look and Ashe got a foreboding feeling in his stomach; he didn’t know exactly what it was that they were thinking – Cab often said that he was still a little too young – but he’d seen that look once or twice from Shinian nobles right before they caused trouble with a girl.
Ashe knew that Erin wouldn’t have missed the look and decided not to mention it. With a smug smile, the Cultivator on the left said something to Erin that had her eye twitch and Ashe knew they were about to regret whatever they’d just said. Immediately, Erin’s politely schooled expression turned cold and she rose up to her full height. Normally, with her demeanour, while Erin was very tall, it wasn’t an intimidating size. When she wanted to, though, she was almost certainly tall enough to intimidate most people. Standing nearly two full heads above the young men, Erin stepped in close to the two teenagers, forcing them to lean back and look up to meet her gaze, and in her response, Ashe heard the names ‘Lu’ and ‘Dawnblaze’ mentioned a few times.
Both of the young men paled further and further as the ‘conversation’ continued and, at some point, Cab began to laugh as the blood drained out of their faces. ‘What’s happening?’ Ashe asked the demon.
Still laughing, the demon responded to Ashe with mirth in his tone, ‘You know how Cultivators like to make use of their heritage to try and cow people into submission?’ Ashe nodded; that was pretty common knowledge and one of the big stereotypes about sect members, not that it was applicable to all Cultivators as people like Lu did exist. ‘Well, Erin’s giving them a taste of their medicine. She’s mentioning all of the high level members of the Order that she knows and, well, as members of a sect from the outskirts of the Order, they’re getting a little bit… nervous about their future well-being after giving an unsavoury suggestion that Erin warms their beds tonight in recompense for you nearly bumping into them.’
Ashe nodded; he didn’t know exactly what Cab meant, having never received any education about the topic, but he did know enough to figure out that the boys had made a massive mistake with Erin. Slowly, the young men seemed to deflate under Erin’s withering stare and, heads ducked down scurried off, further into the city. If they had tails, Ashe was sure that the appendage would be drooping, tucked between their legs.
Erin sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose, and turned to Ashe and Sammath, “Come on, let’s find somewhere to stay for the night. We’ve got enough money to last us for a few nights but then we’ll have to find some way to earn some more.” Erin turned, as though to lead the way for the three of them, but hesitated halfway through the motion, “Just try to pay a little more attention to where you’re going. I think those two were somewhat harmless; just outer disciples with no real influence; but there will be some people that we can’t afford to piss off wandering around the city or, in the future, whatever place we’re in. Some of those people won’t even have some ancestor or relative to fall back on, either, they’ll just be prodigies who can beat us all blindfolded and with their hands tied behind their backs.”
Sammath leant in towards Ashe, putting his mouth conspiratorially close to Ashe’s ear, “When she says us, I think she means us. Pretty sure she could probably take their prodigies.”
Without looking back, Erin responded to Sammath, “Yes. I do. You may be strong, Sammath, and Ashe has a lot of potential with his abilities but that’s all you have. Potential. You’re certainly above the average strength for the Viscount Stage but that’s not a particularly noteworthy achievement. When you come up against someone at your Stage, or even a Stage below, who used to have potential but turned it into power, you’re going to lose. I certainly hope to be there when you fail.”
“Damn.” Sammath muttered, “I thought for sure I was quiet enough just then.”