Corvayne rubbed his head. He was sitting in the dorm room where Preshe was living, drinking a lemonade and basically getting stressful news dumped on him, as if he had positioned himself under a waterfall made of garbage dumping on him. Bell sat on one side, arms folded. Spears was still in a coma and had been wrapped around Bell's neck.
He had called a meeting, well, Gylwin had also called one and had extracted Kirae. They could, if they so chose, get into the Juggernaut and race their way out of the Sect, leaving Rio in the lurch. That is, if Acting Sect Leader Rio-Blackhand-Cumberlin wasn't sitting right next to him, slumped over, head in her hands. [[Unity]] flowed both ways, and he was pretty sure it had it's thumb on the scales of all of them leaving as he felt both a desire to leave and tremendous guilt over said feeling.
He still might go, that is, if they didn't have to deal with a surprise coup. One of the other sect leaders who had some sort of high level cowboy cultivation levels was telling everyone that Rio had been hiding the life stealers. Night Rider had been beaten within an inch of his life and had retreated to a place off map. Quite a few of the daisy duke guards were now enjoying the prison from the other side of the bars.
Gylwin had moved as soon as she realized what was happening and at the moment Kirae and Mosh and June were waiting for them to figure out the next step. LBC was sitting by the window.. Gylwin could cheat them in and out of the ward, and maybe if they just left they'd be rid of the entire sect.
“Once we wake the leader up, I'll give you everything I know about the info that lead us to you and Kirae.”
If he died, he still wouldn't solve the problem with the sect. The leak got the information to someone who got it to them, and they'd come after the group. Yes, Gylwin could probably fight Rio to a standstill, with Grunt it was no contest, and they could possibly set a trap knowing where she was taken. But if the info was coming FROM the Red-Line Sect, that was a problem they didn't have tools to deal with. Corvayne was betting he could badly wound one of their leaders with his current bee-interceptor combo by using [Cross-Skill: Orbital Bombardment], save that he'd also be killing millions of innocent people unless he could get them out into the middle of nowhere.
That was still a soft problem. He could push it back for Future Loop Past Corvayne. Problem two was more likely to follow them and had everything to do with two dead Red-Line guards currently floating down the river. It was why Corvayne every so often looked over to glare at Little Wing.
As it turned out, Little Wing's former fiancee was now engaged to his friend turned rival turned betrayer. The future dead boy was a well-equipped and power-leveled brat who claimed he could rate people's bloodlines or karma or value, whatever the little shit's compass skill's version pointed to, and he saw Preshe in a crowd and decided right there at the Colosseum match that she was going to be wife number 3. He did not believe in old fashioned things such as getting Preshe's opinion.
It explained why Gylwin hadn't attempted to fillet either of the cultivators: her main body was waiting for Preshe to be escorted somewhere quiet, where the two of them turned a pair of level 500 Cultivators into level 500 corpses. Sadly, not the actual problem, something to do with a level 1000 plus daddy sticking to the kid. Little Wing mentioned Karma brought people together and it might be his fault that this guy was interested in Preshe.
Corvayne had been white hot furious at this cultivator. He was very interested if he could focus [Orbital Bombardment] enough to take out the young master, but after a little thinking and observation, about two minutes of it, some of his irritation was now also directed at Little Wing. He might not have taken that line, but Preshe had preemptively started defending Little Wing which summoned an entirely new set of red flags in his head.
Stolen novel; please report.
They were interested in each other. He didn't need [[Unity]], but Gylwin's amusement made him grimace.
Corvayne saw, in the next fifteen seconds, that Little Wing and Preshe were both stealing glances at each other but also not making eye contact. His own eyes narrowed at this. Did Bayou know? She was pointedly looking sheepishly away from Corvayne. She wasn't opposed to it?
The last piece of bad news was something like the 'Don't you know about the guns?' level of every daoboy in the room all agreeing that everyone knows about the stampede.
“Every hundred years a titanic group of cow-like monsters forms a herd that stampedes across the plane. Well, it might be we get a herd every hundred years, and they've been running since the floor existed. Either way, you have a gap of 95 to 100 years. We should have another twenty five years to prepare, but our early alert just went off. We basically do all that digging to help charge the rock with geomatic potential, so we can have our earth mages raise a mountain.”
Corvayne took a deep breath.
“So in a few weeks, instead of a few years, everything that's not shielded by a literal mountain is going to be flattened?”
Rio pulled up a map on her jade tablet. “We can move people onto the mountain, but if we can't raise a mountain we're basically dooming the city, and likely that's the end of the sect. Even if we harvest the materials it'd be hundreds of years to build up to the production of all the non high level parts we've pushed off to the city. Let alone our craftsmen sitting in caves trying to make a gun with wood.”
Little Wing frowned. “I worry about a convergence of Karma here. It makes it much more likely more important things will all come together on that date. Events happening in series, leading up to a major change.”
Corvayne thought back to how things seemed to be going great then just suddenly flipped around. “Tell me about it.”
Preshe stood up straight and looked at Little Wing, even putting a hand on his. “Don't worry. I'll protect you.” She said it in a sort of flat, matter of fact way that Corvayne realized was her doing an impression of him. She actually looked over at Corvayne, as if to say, 'I learned this from you!'. Little Wing smiled, then met Corvayne's gaze and frowned.
What other pieces were still missing? Oh yes, there was something out there that had made his danger sense go crazy.
“Here's the plan. We go to the tomb first thing tomorrow night. Under the cover of dark, Preshe and Mosh help us get the door open, then they keep moving so that when the prince figures out she's not where she's supposed to be... where is that?”
“On his Sect's airship.” Gylwin added. A hint of greed leaked through, her thought clearly being 'It could be OUR airship!'.
“I think that means she goes to the city then doubles back once he's flying that way. We wake the Sect Leader up, and either he moves a mountain, literally, or asks everyone to evacuate, or summons the Watchers and they save the day.”
Rio looked at him. “You were a member of his old Sect? I want to hear-”
Bell now was looking at them like he had looked at Little Wing. Hmm. She needed to cool it, there was nothing going on between him and the Sect Leader.
He admitted he thought she looked good in jeans. But she had some sort of misplaced crush, and the first thing he was doing once they dragged his look-alike out of self imposed nap-time was to tell Sect Leader Dusky to give the poor girl closure.
A stray though from [[Understanding]] had taken root. A critical observation about Rio that suddenly lined everything up. She was like if Gary had been told he needed to be a ruthless sect leader. She'd do a lot of things to make sure her allies and enemies thought of her as cold, she made herself look scary, but it was role play. At the end of the day, Corvayne was pretty sure she was cut from the same stock as Bayou or Lepin or any number of cowgirls whom could cowtivate enough to sling a gun and ride a sword but were more about living life day to day in a pastoral version of a magical kingdom, then go into town to drink and dance on the weekend.
She could kill, and Corvayne saw tremendous potential in switching gear every fraction of a second to optimize her movement and special effects. It was an avenue he might have looked into more if he hadn't lost all of his stuff every reset or been at their mercy when unarmed. In the end though, she wasn't punching above her weight, she was probably an able administrator, but she wasn't a hero and she didn't seem like the kind of weirdo loner that would stick the landing on being a Daoboy.
He shook his head. He was going to spend the night with Bell, whom was radiating worry on everything, and leave the messed up sect leader to her own devices.
What were the chances he was going to see more of her after this week, anyway?