I ducked back below the terrace’s parapet before even a second had passed; even several kilometres away in the dark of night, I couldn’t risk the chance that the Core Disciple could see me. For someone at the peak of the Fourth Step, something as trivial as seeing the whites of my eyes in pitch black was no challenge whatsoever. Maybe they’ve already seen me and are already on their way to gut me where I stand-
“Nah, looks like he’s bored.” Isabella stayed standing, propping herself up on the handrail as she stared off towards the lifts where the Disciple sat. “He’s got a couple of Inner Disciples doing the hard work while he’s looking busy. See?”
I carefully stood up from my squat, eyes raising just enough to see outwards to where Isabella was pointing. With a bit more time to watch, I could once again see the Core Disciple, this time getting a proper glimpse with my mortal eyes; as Isabella had said, he had stationed himself right at the very entrance to the Lifts, occasionally looking up from the scroll in his hand to glance over whatever poor souls were trying to leave the Sect. Even the briefest weight of his gaze was enough to trip up the labourers passing by him, the mortal men and women stumbling underneath the Core Disciple’s attention.
Their trials didn’t end there, either. Usually the grand Lifts beyond would convey them back down towards the Foot of the Falls in a constantly rotating chain of massive platforms, each large enough to carry dozens of carts and hundreds of people; now, the entire mechanism had come to an outright stop for the first time in my memory. The platform that had the fortune to stop at the top was populated with blue robed individuals, each marshalling a troop of grey-robed lessers who searched through crates and carts and interrogated whoever dared to be near them. As I watched, the Disciples finally backed off, giving the signal to the Lifts’ operator. The platform began to move downwards, soon replaced by another- and with a cry audible even from here, it all came to a halt, and the dance began again.
To the mortals that found themselves caught up in the mess, it was an overt display of the power that the Seven Falls Sect had over their lives and livelihoods. But the might of a few hundred cultivators who may not have even taken the Second Step could not be called mighty at all; they were barely worth more than mortals themselves. Instead, my eyes drifted back to that one gold-robed cultivator who sat with his scroll, who in his mere presence outside the Main Compound revealed just how seriously the Sect was taking this.
And they’re doing this because of me. It was a horrifying thought. Isabella had mentioned that she ‘may’ have taken the Ruby Tears right out of the hands of a doctor; had they been in the middle of treating someone? Had some important noble died just so I could live? It would explain why my murderer was so personally interested in finding out what had happened to me, if I’d managed to kill someone else in the act of my resurrection. It’d be poetic, if it weren’t for the fact that they were so clearly ready to kill me for the act.
“No chance of getting through, then?” Isabella dragged me out of my thoughts.
I shook my head at the question. “Not a hope. Most of the Outer and Inner Sect might not be able to recognise a cultivator out of robes, but someone at the peak of the Fourth Step won’t be fooled by something like a little bit of dirt and some rough clothing. And once they realise who I am…”
I couldn’t even just wait for them to get bored. Once they made sure they had the Lifts locked down, they’d push back the security line, bridge by bridge, along the entire Seven Falls. I’d be forced to fall back in the face of desperate Outer Disciples, industrious Inner Disciples, and a few apathetic Core Disciples, all the way back to the Hospital itself. I might as well wait for them in the morgue.
“Oi.” Isabella’s finger poked at my cheek, rescuing me from my spiral. “I didn’t keep you alive just so you could go and die on me. What are our options?”
“Options?” I blinked at her. “What on earth do you mean, options?” I swung my arms out wildly to gesture towards the Lifts. “This was it! From here, our options are getting swarmed by grey, brutalised by blue, or incinerated by gold!“
Isabella leaned her scythe against the railing before firmly grabbing me by both shoulders, pulling me down to one knee on the balcony. “Stay focused, Ryan,” she commanded. “You’re not going to let something like this stop you. Weren’t you ready to sneak by your Librarian friend? How could it be any harder here?”
“I was prepared for that, and it still wasn’t enough!” I argued. “Yun could have killed me on the spot if he’d wanted to!”
Isabella laughed incredulously. “‘Preparation’ isn’t half of it! I watched you dive into that ridiculous wall of water without more than a single thought, utterly sure that you were going to survive. It doesn’t matter whether or not you’re prepared, you’re willing to take that leap of faith. For someone who’s so insistent on not being a cultivator, you certainly possess the sheer audacity of one.”
“Audacity is one word for it,” I muttered. “But I hardly think ‘audacity’ is going to save me here.”
“Then whatever else you have!” Isabella shook me. “You told me you were willing to sneak into the Inner Compound or whatever-”
“Main Compound,” I corrected.
“-or whatever,” she glared, “found the very same cultivator who’d killed you the first time around, and challenged him to a duel to the death, just because you thought it would somehow lead you back to me! Whether you want to call it audacity, or insanity, that’s what we need here!”
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Insanity. That was a good way to describe the past week. I’d spent two and a half years doing my best to hunker down and avoid the eye of anyone who could crush me, and in seven days all of that had fallen down around my ears. I wasn’t going to be able to beg my way out of this one, nor would I be able to avoid it. With the Inner Disciples scouring the Sect, with even Core Disciples leaving their seclusion to look for me…
The realisation hit me like a punch to the chest. “...Then they’ve left it wide open.”
“Oi.” Isabella shook me again. “Share, asshole!”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “The Main Compound! If they’re really marshalling out nearly every single Inner Disciple, and if even the Cores are getting pulled into it, then who’s left in the Main Compound?”
“Great.” Isabella’s eyes narrowed. “So rather than sneaking out somehow in the one way in or out of the sect, we’re going to walk right into the heart of their power. Just because I said we needed insanity doesn’t mean-”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” I interrupted her. “It’s not insanity. And the Lifts aren’t the only way in or out.”
I didn’t dwell very much on the first time I’d ever snuck into the place; it had really only been to prove I could, to thumb my nose at the nobles who’d bragged that I’d never wear the blue. I didn’t even spend particularly long within, doing my best to circumnavigate the outside paths and avoid the more-travelled areas where someone in blue robes could apprehend me. It had still led me along some beautiful fall-side roads and suspended bridges, looking down upon the world that was so far below, wondering just what it would be like for everyone to look up to me in turn.
My wishful thinking had never borne fruit, of course, but one curiosity had appeared in my outing; a strange opening in the cliff-face where the falls parted neatly on either side, revealing a room within, utterly absent of the usual aged wood and pristine marble, and instead containing…
“Large paper wings, you say?” The Witch Doctor hummed, slowly stitching together the Disciple between us both.
“Something like that,” I said, doing my best to hold down the Disciple as they squirmed against the ice cold of the needle, doing my best to ignore the gaping wound in their chest. “I saw them flying above the Sect. Are they enchanted?”
“Scripted,” the Doctor corrected absentmindendly, repeating the suture a few more times before tying it off. “True enchanting is a lost art. The Script Wings you saw are a more recent innovation from those busybodies in the Cloud Breaking Sect.”
“Scripted,” I repeated, testing the word. “How does it work?”
“I’m not aware of the full details,” he shrugged, threading the needle once more as he turned towards the rest of the Disciple’s injured body. “Supposedly it involves embedding a technique into a material, much like- ah,” the Witch Doctor clicked his tongue, realising that the Disciple before him was convulsing, heart visibly beating between their open ribs. “Perhaps an object lesson is necessary. Pass the Shock Rod there. Just as the faintest dose of a poison may be a remedy, lightning from the Heavens can possess a similar property-”
After that unfortunate scene, the Witch Doctor had explained that the constructs were limited to Core Disciples and Elders only; being one of the few products that the Seven Falls Sect had needed to purchase from elsewhere, they were wildly expensive and utterly beyond the reach of even some blue-robed noble. To me, they were just another sign of just how far I still had to climb, to join those who flew so easily through the air.
But it looks like I’m going to have my chance to fly sooner than I thought. “They’re looking around the Sect in the hope that they’ll catch me, and they’re going to lose sight of what’s under their own noses.” I slowly stood up, staring out at the glow of the Core Disciple in the distance. “They can’t even comprehend the idea that anyone would break into the Main Compound in the first place, let alone someone they’re actively hunting down. And because of their arrogance, we’re going to have a chance of stealing one of those Script Wings.”
“And why wouldn’t they just chase you?” I glanced at Isabella, who gestured again at the Disciple. “If they’re already willing to put a Disciple on watch here, why wouldn’t they send another after you?”
It was a fair point; even if they didn’t have many of them, the Sect still had a complement of the constructs, four to use for whatever the purpose the Sect deemed necessary. Chasing down someone who’d stolen one would undoubtedly count.
Fortunately, I’d already come up with a brilliant solution.
“That’s easy,” I declared, turning away from the Lifts, and towards the Compound’s walls in the distance. “We’ll just destroy all the others.”
“...There’s the insanity,” Isabella shook her head with a chuckle, before following me over to the side of the building, hopping the railing and sliding down the shingles of the overhang to drop to the alley below. “How much must these things cost? Don’t you think you’ve made enough of an enemy of the Sect?”
Didn’t you hear Yun? Before you challenge the Heavens, you must challenge the World, I grinned as I ran down the street, peeling around a corner and leaping up onto another building to avoid one of the patrols of Inner Disciples just coming around the corner. Maybe it’s about time the Sect had a worldy challenge of its own.
Isabella’s laugh rang beautifully through the air as the patrol disappeared behind us, and it didn’t take long after that to reach the central island where the Main Compound sat, quieter than I’d ever seen it. The security guard had even been reduced to a single Disciple this time, a blue-robed girl who seemed significantly more concerned with the pocket mirror she held up to her face as she applied some cosmetics to her cheeks.
And just beyond her, hidden away in a warehouse looking out on the world below, my chance to escape waited. A chance to see the world that I’d ignored for the past three years, my gaze so firmly fixed on the skies above. Nothing makes you appreciate life like Death, huh?
“Try not to get yourself killed this time around.” Isabella murmured, nudging me in the shoulder. “Ready?”
For the third and last time, I prepared to enter the Main Compound.