Booker left Greenmoon’s alchemy lab with his head buzzing like a nest of hornets, different ideas conflicting and clashing until all he could do was scrunch his eyes shut and try to shake them off, clearing his mind to see forward; First I’ll finish my own studies into refinement methods. Greenmoon can’t adopt me as a new apprentice until my old master agrees, and Master Ping is off on a visit to the countryside for the next week…

That means I’ve been blessed with free time. Best to make use of it.

He was on his way to the library when he caught a strange look from a crippled servant sweeping the courtyards. She glanced at him, and her eyes were oddly intense as she made careful eye contact, then nodded in the direction behind him before quickly turning back to her work.

As he turned around, his eyes swept once over the scene, not lingering for long enough that anyone could tell he was trying to catch something in particular. There was nobody here in the square – but around the edges, where the rooftops were supported by wooden pillars, he saw a shadow sink back behind one of the beams.

Gargoyle. Or one of the other apprentices.

I suppose I can only blame my determination to leave a bad impression, but…

He walked away, down the corridors, resisting the urge to glance behind as he passed groups of chattering disciples and counted himself lucky they were there. In a straightforward environment, it wasn’t just that he couldn’t hope to fight a cultivator, but they could outrun him too, meaning his only hope of escape was to complicate the situation.

Lure them into revealing themselves while I’m on friendly ground, then try to evade long enough that someone shuts the fight down…

I need to get to the library.

Booker was under no illusions that anybody would step in just to save a cripple from a beating – but if he could get to the library, there was a good chance the librarians would shut down any disruption. The books there were worth a good deal more than his hide.

If I can give them the slip now, I can ask Xan to deal with them later…

Or better yet, pay off another disciple, so I don’t have to lean on my friends too much. I don’t want them thinking I only keep them around to make use of them.

Lowering his head, he turned left towards the library –

And saw an empty corridor.

Shit.

With the corner of the intersecting hallways between him and his shadow, Booker began to run full tilt, rushing for the safety of the library at the end. Running was a desperate move, but the blind start he was getting would at least let him open up some distance.

He glanced back halfway down the hall.

Gargoyle had turned the corner and broken into a run of his own, full tilt, body diagonal to the ground as his arms swung and his feet hammered into the ground. And he was gaining fast. His eyes were pitch black, and that same darkness had extended through varicose veins stretching across his face.

Oh fuck. That’s a berserking pill.

He really means to kill me.

He snapped his head around, looking towards the library doors. They were too far ahead of him – there was no chance of safety there.

Time to improvise.

He turned a hard right, skidding on the balls of his feet and scrambling not to fall as he changed directions. The moment he was out of sight, he spun around, drawing a grenade loaded with blinding powder from his bag. A single wisp of flame from furnace lit the fuse.

Gargoyle came running around the corner–

And his eyes went wide as Booker flung the grenade at his face.

He swatted it out of the air, letting out a sound somewhere between a scream and a howl of rage. It went off in his hand, blowing fingers into bloody chunks and spraying blinding powder in all directions, so that even Booker felt the air turn suddenly acidic as he lifted a hand to block his face and ran on, leaving Gargoyle to scream incoherently.

He dodged past doors that were swinging open, faces that were staring out searching for the explosive noise that had overtaken the usually-quiet Sect. He had no time to stop and no hope they’d stop Gargoyle for him. Instead, Booker sped down the steps of the Sect’s gate, turning back to see Gargoyle gaining on him with murder in his one good remaining eye.

Booker shot down the steps, vaulted over a wagon parked at the entrance, and down into the busy streets beyond, shoving and elbowing people aside as they shouted outrage. A moment later Gargoyle hit them, and his sheer bulk and rage-fueled cultivation sent them tumbling like ragdolls as he bowled the crowd aside, cutting like a knife through the bulk of the masses.

Booker dodged another corner, counting on Gargoyle to be cautious of another ambush. He sped into an alley, vaulted a wall, and dashed through a backyard full of henhouses, feathers flying and squawks filling the air as chickens scattered underfoot.

Gargoyle crashed straight through the first fence as Booker was vaulting up over the second fence on the far side of the yard.

Not going to work. He’s too strong for obstacles to matter…

Gritting his teeth, Booker made a split-second decision. Instead of continuing over the fence, he got his foot on top and pushed off, leaping onto the roof of the house. Soft, matted thatch fibers began to sag and collapse the moment his weight pressed down upon them, but his momentum allowed him to run across the collapsing roof and fling himself onto the next house – one with a tile roof, by the grace of the gods.

Tiles slid and skidded under him, sending him tumbling towards the edge of the rooftop, but he jammed his foot into a gutter and brought himself to a halt.

Behind him, Gargoyle was climbing onto the first building, laboriously pulling his weight up. The straw had collapsed, but in doing so it had revealed timber beams below. Balancing on one, Gargoyle began to walk forward.

Booker flung a roofing tile at his head. The disciple swatted it out of the air, the tile shattering into red dust and fragments of clay against his hand. Booker threw another, not really expecting him to lose his balance now, but hoping to slow him down enough for Booker to catch his breath.

This time, Gargoyle reached too far when he swung, and unbalanced. One foot slipped off the beam and his weight was suddenly in freefall, only a sudden grab for the rafter catching him and leaving him clinging to the beam by his one good hand. The timber groaned under his weight.

I hope the whole house falls on you.

Booker turned and ran, diving off the tile rooftop into the alleys below, splashing through cold puddles and knee-deep mist as he wove at random through blind corners and narrowing alleyways.

He could hear Gargoyle scream and heard the crashing of footsteps.

But it was over. It was already over.

Finding a crossing where two alleys ran together, Booker had stomped his foot down in the mud puddle leading one direction, leaving a big obvious footprint, then doubled back. He slipped into a dark corner where one house stuck out enough to create a small wall to hide behind. Pushing himself flat, he forced himself to breathe slowly despite the aching lack of oxygen in his lungs, trying not give himself away by sound…

One moment passed by, then another. Gargoyle lurched into view at the end of the alley and Booker pressed himself deeper into cover – the disciple was gripping his ruined hand, and huge quantities of blood were dripping out onto the ground behind him. His breath was a ragged, sawing noise as he lurched about in confusion, staring down a cross-section where Booker could have gone any damn way.

He saw the footprint and snorted, taking off towards the river.

Booker slid out of cover and followed, creeping along behind. The clock was ticking and his time to strike was approaching…

Because the berserking pill was wearing off.

Every pill that brought short-term strength had side effects. Most of them – especially the ones made of cheap ingredients – could be nearly lethal when they first wore off, reducing the user to a state where they could barely stand.

The pill was a sign of what Gargoyle had been planning. You didn’t take a pill like that to beat up a cripple. You took one to build up a head of fury and blind anger, so you could drive yourself into a frenzy and do the unthinkable.

He’d been preparing to kill.

Booker’s hand closed around the familiar, finger-grooved handle of his knife, drawing the reassuring weight into his hand. He wasn’t a killer, but…

This bastard’s gone too far. I can’t let him have as many tries to kill me as he wants.

I have to stop him.

His heart was beating hard, the cold intent of what he was planning making his blood race so hard his veins felt solid. His hand was clenching until the knuckles turned white around the knife’s polished grip.

Ahead, Gargoyle had realized there was no hope of finding him now. Not realizing how close Booker really was, he slowed, bending to lean heavily against the walls. At the end of the alley, at the bottom of a narrow stairway, the river was lapping at its concrete bounds.

Booker froze at the sudden sound as Gargoyle puked, letting out a stream of splattering yellow bile and sinking even as his hand gripped at the bricks of the wall.

He’s got to be near helpless now.

With a final scowl, gritting his teeth for what needed to be done, Booker walked forward, measuring his steps by the heartbeat as he advanced on Gargoyle’s turned back.

As he came within arm’s reach, Gargoyle turned and looked up, catching Booker’s eyes in his own – his pupils were ragged, tendrils of black extending across the brown and white of his eyes.

Booker lunged forward, pushed him back against the wall, and drove his knife into the dantian.

Gargoyle let out a small, disbelieving gasp as the knife slid in. Then he choked, blood bubbling over his bottom lip in frothy pink bubbles as his mouth hung open. A moment later, that blood was splattered across Booker’s face by a cough.

Booker’s face in that moment was horrific. His lips were drawn back, teeth bared like an animal. He ripped the blade free and stepped back quickly, dodging back from Gargoyle’s hand as the brute tried to clutch him, not to hurt him but just to stand.

Gargoyle toppled forward onto the floor of the alley. A red mass washed out of his mouth as he puked again, blood and bile in equal measure.

“It won’t kill you.” Booker said, although his voice was shaking. He tried to remind himself of what would have happened if Gargoyle had gotten his hands around Booker’s throat. How little mercy would have been shown to him. “A gut wound takes hours to bleed someone out.”

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

“But…” Booker reached up and wiped the blood-spittle from his face. “You won’t cultivate again.”

A blow to the dantian was the living death of a cultivator. He had made Gargoyle helpless – he had made him a cripple.

The boy looked up, pushing himself off the ground as blood wept from his gut. It had gotten all over his legs and hands in a matter of seconds, plastering his robes down under heavy, wet red. His eyes were full of horror, disbelief, hatred.

Then his teeth came together, red as sunset, and he screamed as rage burnt the rest away.

He lunged for Booker – and Booker brought up the knife.

Without even meaning to, he pierced up through the soft bottom of Gargoyle’s jaw, behind the chin, up through his tongue, up into his skull.

And the boy’s weight fell against him in a dead slump, dragging blood across his robes.

For a minute…

Maybe two…

Booker stood there, heart beating fast, the forceful pulse pounding through his blood making his veins feel cold and unmoving. Did he mean to do that? Was it an accident? Did it matter? He could no longer recall what, if anything, he thought in the moment he struck.

Then pragmatism took over. Grabbing the corpse by the scruff of the robes, Booker dragged it down to the river and flung it into the water. After a moment more, looking at the bloodstained knife in his hand, he threw that away as well.

Well, now I’m a cultivator. Like it or not.

— — —

Booker was only vaguely aware of the walk that took him to his rented apartment in the city. The streets were bustling as ever, and he’d concealed his bloodstained robes underneath the rag cloak he’d been planning to use in his appearance as the masked doctor. By the time he made his way to the safety of the apartment, he had numbed to the risk of being caught, dripping in blood and guilty of killing another disciple. The further he walked, the less he felt, as if his conscience was still standing frozen in that alley behind him.

Guilt had faded quickly. Too quickly. Now a kind of second-hand fear, that it had been too easy, was mingling with the fear of discovery.

In truth, it was Gargoyle’s own fault he was dead. But the Sect had a policy of punishing the survivor when their disciples came to blows and one was murdered. Self-defense or not, he should have been able to end things with a crippling at the worst.

As he made his way inside, Snips buzzed down onto his shoulder, But Booker could only greet the enthusiastic little bug with a numb hand reaching up to scratch the top of Snips’ head. Froggy was outside, basking in the cooling embers of yesterday’s fire.

“Alright…”

Booker sat down heavily, kneeling in the grass of the yard behind the apartment. His breathing was shaky for a moment, but he forced it into a slow, consistent rhythm.

“I still need to help Wild Swan. I can’t just… stop everything…”

But he hadn’t succeeded in getting a book on pottery from the library and copying its contents into his head. He was no more advanced in his knowledge of clay than he’d been yesterday, when his jar had failed to hold up under the kiln’s heat.

“I have two more days…”

And with his master gone, and Greenmoon waiting to officially make him an apprentice, he had no reason to return to the Sect to sleep. He could simply practice the refinement technique, sleep on the ground, and practice again. The idea of burying himself in work felt almost therapeutic at that moment.

But he needed somewhere to start.

Focusing on the book inside his mind, Booker remembered he’d earned a 1-Hour Practice Token, which had manifested as a green silk bookmark.

It was time to cash it in.

As he focused on the bookmark, and thoughts of pottery, the pages began to flip. Faster and faster they rushed past, until they formed a golden blur that began to spread into Booker’s vision, clouding his view of the world with golden sparks.

He blinked, and when he opened his eyes…

He was somewhere else.

— — —

Booker stood in the shadow of a distant mountain with a bucket of clay in his hands, watching an old man dig at the riverside for more rich, red-colored clay. He was in an unfamiliar body, one a few years younger than Rain but almost as physically imposing.

Still… He looked like a child compared to the old man digging in the river. That old man might have been withered, almost skeletal, his skin drawn tight like a wrinkled yellow canvas over his bones, but the underlying structure of his skeleton and frame was enormous, easily eight feet tall when he straightened up from hunching over the riverbed. His head was bald and liver-spotted but an immense tablet of curly gray beard hung from his chin.

Booker realized he knew this old creature. Or rather, the body he was in knew, and he was slowly gaining the memories of his host – the man’s name was Master Long.

Is dropping into other people’s bodies going to become a habit?

Master Long rose from the river, hands dripping with chunks of red-gray clay, and dropped a massive handscoop of mud into the bucket Booker was holding. For a moment their eyes met and Booker had to resist the urge to step back abruptly.

The man’s martial intent was beyond bone-chilling. It was a force of pure winter, and it passed through him like a wall of cold making his muscles tighten so hard in his shoulders that his bones ached.

Master Long’s terrifying aura was famous in the small village nearby. It was so ferocious that Booker’s host had spent seven days in front of Master Long’s cottage, trying to acclimate himself to the horrifying weight of its presence, before he could dare ask to be made an apprentice potter.

Master Long had actually run out of patience first – kicking the door open and shouting, “Do you want to learn something or are you just going to sit in my yard like a clod of dirt?”

Booker’s host was named Lin Han, but from that day his master had always called him Clod.

“Alright.” Master Long said. “Today, you finally learn how to handle the potter’s wheel.”

Booker could think of no more appropriate response than to bow his head gratefully, but Master Long just snorted. “Don’t expect to make anything worth spitting in, on your first try. We’ll be lucky if you can make a ball.”

Together, they made their way up the hillside, to the master’s cottage and the small barn by the side where the pottery wheel was kept. Booker sat down in the stool beside the wheel, placing his foot on the heavy stone disk below. The weight and proportions of the machine was such that once a few pushes from his foot got the lower wheel to spin, the higher wheel where the clay was placed would spin much more rapidly, and the momentum stored in the stone wheel’s mass would keep the speed steady.

“What would you like to make?” The master asked him, hefting the clay onto the wheel and sprinkling water across it. He spun the wheel once, and formed the clay easily into a round dome with a simple movement of his hands.

“A jar.” Booker said.

“Alright. The first lesson is this.” Taking a long wooden cane from the wall, Master Long struck the ground, a solid cracking sound. “When you hear the stick, push the wheel with your foot. Keep a steady pace and you’ll have no trouble.”

At the fall of the cane, Booker pushed at the wheel and set it spinning. As Master Long kept a steady beat he kept kicking the lower wheel until the upper wheel was spinning fast, the block of clay on its pedestal rotating like a wet blur of red.

“Alright! Now, press your thumb into the middle. Slowly pinch out, squeezing the walls thinner and thinner…”

Once again, Booker followed instructions, pressing his thumb down into the sopping wet clay and feeling the rapid spinning of the wheel bend it around his hand, the clay pushing outwards from his grip, moving to wherever his hands were not. The rotation of the wheel meant that, as long as his movements were slow and steady, the shaping would be uniform across the whole of the vessel.

“Now, take the outside and push your fingers down into the bottom, try to cup the clay upwards, guiding the walls higher and taller…”

Booker tried. But this time, the work was too delicate for his untrained hands. As he tried to scoop the clay upwards it distorted, toppling inwards. The wheel spun on as his work folded into nothing. But all Booker could do was let out a laugh – he truly enjoyed the feeling of the water-smoothed clay warping under his hands, the gentle pressure that bent the spinning surface to his touch.

“What’s funny about a broken pot, hmm?” The master asked. All the while the beat of his cane against the floor had never stopped.

Booker shook his hand. “Sorry sir.”

“Try again. Pinch from the top to make the walls thin, lift from the bottom to round it.”

Again, Booker tried, and gain the clay spun away from him. But he had a particular kind of focus, one that enabled him to soak up his own mistakes and learn from the easily, trying again. The third attempt was no different, but every moment he spent solely focused on the task at hand was another moment he didn’t have to think of Gargoyle’s face as the boy died. The sheer weight of what he was trying not to think of lent him an almost supernaturally narrow field of focus.

“You’re treating it like a dead thing. Feel the life inside the clay.”

Booker paused, and cleared his mind, picking the clay from underneath his fingernails. He knew what the old master meant. There was a sense of… of life to the clay, and the more he worked it under his hands, the more strongly he felt it wanted to be a certain way. A vision was forming inside his head, a shape the clay wanted to take.

On the fourth try, his walls held, and the round bottomed pot truly began to form under his hands, like a work of magic. Soon he was able to create the shape he’d envisioned, narrow at the bottom and wider just below the top, then narrowing again to form a small entrance. It wasn’t much of a pot – only enough to hold a handful – but he felt a sense of triumph.

“Is that what you wanted?” The master asked.

“Yes.” Booker sighed out, grinning to himself. The act had come easily, he was maybe talented at this, and he’d never realized how enjoyable it was. It was almost enough to push the looming thoughts from his mind.

“Seems an awfully small thing to come all this way for.” The master grunted.

Booker looked up sharply, and met those piercing gray eyes, cloudy with cataracts but still fierce as a timber wolf’s gaze.

“Yes, you’re not fooling me. I know a karmic incarnation when I see one.”

“Apologies for borrowing your apprentice.” Booker said quickly. “But I actually don’t know what a karmic incarnation is. I just…”

“Arrived here?” Master Long raised an eyebrow, taking out a clay pipe. Lin Han knew the pipe well. Like all of Master Long’s pipes, it was made in the morning, fired in the noontime, and ready to smoke by evening. It wa sa work of art, shaped like a boar’s head with a snorting nose that vented smoke, curling tusks, and individual brushstrokes of fur etched into the red clay. As the old man lit his pipe and puffed out a ring of smoke, he said…

“A karmic incarnation is a return to a past life. You, Clod, are my apprentice, although you’ve long since died and forgotten everything that happened between us. You return now to act out a day in your own life and reclaim old knowledge. As far as cultivating tricks go, karmic incarnation is a supreme power only mastered by the great sages – or lucky bastards.”

“I suppose I can only count myself lucky.” Booker admitted. “So… This isn’t someone else’s body? This is…” He looked down at his clay-stained fingers. No wonder it felt so natural. “Me.”

“That’s right.” Master Long agreed. “Far easier than casting yourself into someone else’s body, which is a whole ‘nother kind of miracle, and a half-heretical one at that.”

Booker suppressed as wince – did the old man know that too? He was lucky he’d landed in the humble mountain Sect and not under the gaze of someone this sharp, or else he would’ve been revealed as a reincarnator before he could have even gotten his feet under him.

“Master Long, I…” Booker paused. “Do I have the right to call you that?”

“Mmm, well… Let’s say you’ve earned the right with one lifetime of apprenticeship. If you need my advice or my counsel, let’s hear it.”

“I killed someone.” Booker admitted. It felt so alien, hearing those words in his own voice. ‘Clod’ and ‘Booker’ truly did resemble each other.

“Did they deserve it?” Master Long asked.

“Yes. But that’s not why it bothers it me… It has nothing to do with them at all.” Booker frowned. “It’s just… I’d been struggling with my morals, deciding which way to turn, holding myself accountable for my actions.”

“And all that went out the window, didn’t it? Just as soon as your life was in danger, you fought like a beast.” Master Long chuckled, shaking his head. “So it always is. An animal will chew its own leg off to escape a trap. But a man is more cunning, and will take someone else’s leg instead. A man who is backed into a corner discovers in that moment how precious life is… But many times, he’s too late, and his fate is already sealed by the time he realizes how desperate he is to survive. Be lucky you didn’t realize your love of life too late to preserve yourself, and be glad your hands acted as they did.”

“Is… Is that all? We’re just animals?”

“Animals who can shape the future. Animals who can make choices that lead away from violence and towards prosperity. We’re only animals for maybe ten or twenty seconds in our whole lives, if that, the few seconds where we’re pushed to the brink. If you let that define you, then yes. But remember this. The state of the world is conflict, conflict ever-lasting. It’s no shame for your heart to be the same. Forever full of questions, forever doubting itself, trying to find its way through the maze of the world towards something good. It’s when you stop worrying, when you feel certain of yourself and surrounded by a righteousness nothing can pierce, that you’ll be in trouble. A heart without debate within itself is a dead and hollow thing.” The master drank deeply from the stem of his pipe, the tobacco flaring in the bowl as smoke drooled from the boar’s nostrils.

Booker sighed and looked up.

For a moment he gazed at the mountainside, the rising pillar of red earth dotted with forests and icy glaciers. Slowly something began to itch at the back of his mind, and he bent his head slightly, trying to see what subconsciously he’d already realized.

The image slowly clicked together.

The whole of the mountain was a single, enormous golem, a man made entirely from red clay.

He looked back down, new respect in his eyes. “Thank you. One more thing, if you don’t mind…”

His hour was up. The vision was beginning to fade.

“What am I like, in this life? Do I do good?”

Master Long just snorted, venting smoke from his nostrils like the clay boar. “Ha. You’re the same fool in every life, I reckon. But you have a better heart than most.”

Everything went white, like an empty page.