The hiss was followed by a sound that was almost like rustling leaves, if rustling leaves were deafening.
Then there were snakes, lots of snakes. They covered the ground and dangled from the trees. The forest floor and the road—save a circle around the wagon train—turned into a wriggling nightmare. It almost looked like the surface of Lake Katarn on a windy day.
Light dimmed, and the air grew even heavier. Ren’s bones rattled in fear beyond words and comprehension.
He peered out at the approaching darkness from the east. The forest bent and opened, and through the opening something came.
It was midnight black. All scales and teeth. And huge.
The thing’s eyes were slitted, and its gaze burned into his spirit.
HHHSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
The sound was a thing both physical and spiritual. An assault on body and mind.
He couldn’t breathe.
“CHARGE!” The creeping shadows had been pushed off of the Headman and he leaped with blinding speed, his spear glimmering with unnatural light against the black miasma as he hurled it toward the beast.
With a desperate battle cry, the other men charged too.
Still in flight, Tamul the fearless drew his sword.
The spear blinked out and crumpled to dust as it drew near to the beast. Its massive black tail batted Tamul out of the air faster than Ren could blink, and with a ripping wind, it encircled the caravan several times over with its undulating length.
The men reached its body and thrust their spears, only for the tips to break off on contact with the dark scales.
With a wavelike motion it lifted itself and slammed down upon the warriors, flattening them with a squelching crunch that shook the earth.
Ren was frozen, leaning so far out of the wagon that he tipped out, landing on the dirt face first.
He managed to roll onto his side in time to see Tamul—sword glittering—strike against the serpent’s whipping tail.
Ren expected a great clash that would shake the heavens. Instead there was no sound. Just a dark hungry silence that swallowed all as the blade shattered and the beast’s gaping maw closed around the mercenary.
All that was left when the snake’s head rose was a pair of legs, which stood for a moment before tipping one by one to the ground.
Ren was suffocating. His lungs wouldn’t work. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t even cry out.
Then the great serpent locked its eyes on him.
Even his heart couldn’t beat.
Darkness descended in a flash of shadow and glistening teeth.
He was going to die!
Helpless again.
A maw large enough to swallow a wagon whole closed around him. It was the longest moment of his life. It was the last-
BOOOOOOOM
*******
Osai was frozen in the presence of the beast. Just like the mortal he was.
He watched helplessly as the caravanahri were slaughtered, as Ren fell, as the headman’s last stand ended. It could have easily taken the man in one piece, but it seemed to enjoy the carnage.
The truth was, even at the height of his power this beast would have been beyond him. It was a fractured fragment of something ancient. A primordial power.
Was this the final lesson? He’d been sure that he would find the secret to his ascension if he stayed close to the boy. He’d already felt pieces of himself being drawn together, guided by the music of the boy’s songs. Mortal attachment to others was something he’d transcended long before, but he somehow started to feel genuine affection for Ren as of late.
So this was the end.
The spirit beast lunged for the boy.
He would sing no more songs, lift no more hearts. The seeds Osai had planted in his mind would never bear fruit. That unsure smile would never mature into more.
Something inside Osai broke.
BOOOOOOOM
The lightning in his veins exploded past the wall he’d tried to build to contain it. His flesh burned and disintegrated in a flash—only to be recreated anew.
Osai opened his eyes.
Bright flames ate away at the trees, and smoke joined the inky miasma of the beast from singed scales.
Its head rose and centered on him.
He looked down at his hands. Ah, so this was how it was.
He met the gaze of the beast.
*******
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
The air fractured as blinding light blasted from somewhere Ren couldn’t see and the serpent's head jerked to the side. A tooth scraped across his gut, but the jaws closed on air.
There was a moment where he wondered what happened. Where he contemplated how he would have expected the injury to hurt more. This had to be what the medical text had talked about. Some soldiers wouldn’t even notice a missing limb until there was a pause in the fight.
Then there was pain. Unimaginable pain. Even against the weight of the beast’s presence his body writhed and bucked and yelped. Like liquid fire, it spilled across his flesh, into his bones and lungs and skin. Carving into his soul.
Ren’s agony was so profound that it drove him to madness.
He dreamed that he could breathe again.
He dreamed that a younger Osai strode out of the burning wagon, his body strong and upright, his blind eye crackling with lightning so bright it was beyond color.
He dreamed of a great storm that somehow only ruffled his clothes but picked up all the hissing snakes and scattered them to the wind.
He dreamed that the old man slipped into a lightning bolt that shot up into the clouds then down into the great beast, traveling its length till it screamed a hissing scream, scales aglow, and exploded.
The last thing he dreamed was Osai standing in the smoking ruin of the beast, dead eye burning with heavenly lightning.
Then the pain took him.
*******
Osai stood on the threshold of divinity. The precipice of godhood.
Yet he didn’t cross the chasm. Not as he had when he’d become an immortal. The power didn’t pour into him and become his. No, he became a conduit. The power immediately started to flee his grasp as soon as his task was complete. But as he knelt over the boy he came back into alignment and sight was restored to his deformed eye.
It wasn’t mortal sight, dependent on light. It was a piercing perception that tracked the threads of creation to their roots and revealed secrets.
That was how he knew that the darkening blood around the boy’s wound was the result of a spiritual venom that coated the serpent’s teeth. It had left a sentient piece of itself within him.
“Honored Master,” said one of the merchants who had chartered the caravan trip. His voice was shaky as he poked his head from his wagon. “Is the danger passed?”
Osai nodded and turned away.
The merchants and drivers spilled from their wagons and prostrated themselves at his feet. What nonsense. He chuckled remembering a time when he’d enjoyed such demonstrations.
“We thank the great Master for his mercy in saving us,” said another merchant, his linen tunic and heavy cloak slowly soaked in blood from one of the puddles that was once a caravanahri. “How may we offer our thanks, Exalted One?”
He was no Master, but correcting them served no purpose. “Collect the remains of the heroes who gave their lives. Clear a carriage for me to treat the boy. Stay away from the serpent.”
Osai had dabbled in many crafts over the course of his thousand years, but he was no alchemist. Instead, the threads guided his hands. He gathered roots, and leaves from the forest and samples of the beast’s scales and flesh and blood.
Then he called down lightning in its truest form to purify the remains, till all that was left was a coiling spiral of ash several leagues long upon the scorched earth. This Qi was dangerous and could infect the forest if left to fester. The worst case would be if it got its roots in a human. He needed to hurry if he was to save his young friend.
He joined Ren in the back of their new private wagon.
Doubt weighed on him, but the threads kept him at work with his preparations as they began to move. Even with the remains destroyed, an echo of the beast remained and it would draw all manner of things to bear.
Osai’s strength waned and his bones protested as he ground down on the ingredients before him. He wasn’t sure he could even protect them from a roaming forest cat now that his borrowed power was fading, leaking from the cracks in his spirit. He couldn’t hold onto it. But he’d finally tasted what he’d been searching for the past sixty-three years.
He looked at his straining hands, working the mortar and pestle, some of the wrinkles were gone, and the joints didn’t click as they had before.
Progress. But he was still weak. His energy body was still in pieces. He had no energy of his own to command, and it was only the Qi from the Great River that passed through him to accomplish this work. For Ren.
It was a damn shame. If he had been restored to the second realm he might have been able to heal Ren more directly. No. Something in him said that was wrong. It wasn’t his place to walk the boy’s path for him. The boy was going to have to do most of the work himself.
But the monster had clearly been drawn to the power trapped in Osai’s own body. He would do all he could to help Ren heal.
Osai smeared the paste onto the wound, ambient Qi flowing through his fingers to activate the salve. Some of the crackling heavenly lightning from his own body trailed along with the other energy passing into the boy, and Osai panicked.
But his friend didn’t explode or disintegrate, somehow accepting the energy as it guided the medicine.
The wagon passed over a bump and Ren’s medical textbook fell from the bench onto the floor. A sheaf of papers spilled from where they had been hiding between the pages of the text.
The pages were imbued with Qi. Warded and protected. And bound to the boy.
Osai’s hands finished their work. He wiped them off and leaned over to pick up the pages.
Broken Path, the first page read. A manual!
What kind of path was this? His master had broken Osai’s cultivation path. Had it all been leading up to this moment.
He reached out his hand.
*******
Ren’s veins itched and burned. He couldn’t imagine death being this painful, so he was probably still alive.
His eyes cracked open.
Osai was sitting in the lotus position, humming out the back of the wagon, facing away from him.
“Ah, you’re awake.” Osai didn’t bother to turn around. How had he-
Ren remembered a fever dream in which the old man had called down lightning and slain the beast that had attacked the caravan.
“You’re a cultivator?” He wasn’t really asking. The words came out dry and raspy and he winced at the pain in his throat.
“I was,” said the old man. “Now I suppose I’m just an old man.”
“But- But I saw-”
“Yes. But to be a cultivator you must have the ability to build up Qi in your body. My body cannot contain Qi. Before you ask, I’m not sure I could properly explain what happened. Even if I could, I’m not sure the knowledge wouldn’t be more harmful than helpful to you.”
Ren saw the medical book laying splayed out on the floor of the wagon. The manual! Where was it?
His body tensed from fear that Osai might have taken it, then pain shot from his toes to the crown of his head wiping all thoughts of manuals and dead uncles and mysterious old cultivators from his mind.
“AAAAHHH!” Screaming was all he could do.
Osai was with him now. “Boy. BOY!” The old man slapped him. “Breathe. Once you are ready, I’ve prepared a pill for you to take with some water.”
Ren didn’t know how long it took to be “ready”, but eventually the agony simmered down from flames to embers. Osai placed a tablet on his tongue and tipped back a water skin until Ren was able to get the pill down.
“I cannot heal you, Ren. The venom is in you, and it carries the shadow of that beast’s spirit. Its wrath and hunger are trying to consume you. There is an ancient technique I can adapt so you can circulate the Qi from this pill to hold the shadow at bay, to keep it moving so it does not get lodged in your body, but it is a temporary fix until you figure out a way to expunge the shadow or bring it to heel. It will require that we awaken your dantian.”
Awaken his dantian!
“If you cannot, you will die.”
That... was less exciting.