"C'mon," Nash said, a hitch in his voice, only not out of breath due to his Third Calcification cultivation. With his good arm, he grabbed a fallen Sorex and heaved him up to his feet; he had been knocked down by the casual sweep of Amusement's arm, and lost his balance. Even now, he was shaking on his feet.
"We have to get out of here," he continued half-manically, ducking under a burst of shrapnel produced by the fight of the much more powerful cultivators nearby.
Unsteadily, Sorex ran forward in a stumbling way, the second-last in the rough line of those Nash had directed to run away. Within that line were the only survivors of the attack on Amusement, those being himself, the four Young Masters, and the one surviving guard, a Beryl. Bringing up the back of the line, Nash could hear the sounds of the battle; crackles of thunder and the 'zapping' of short-circuits warred against the tinkling, wind-chime sounds of the floating clouds of sharpened metal and the groaning of masses of steel directed at the Lightning cultivator.
A few harrowing moments and a few hundred harrowing feet later, they were safely (or, rather, less unsafely) hunkered down behind a building, putting a few feet of concrete between them and the cultivator battle.
"*What was that?*" Leo whispered at Nash, the tone reproaching enough it was best described as a hiss. "You almost got us killed there!"
Nash's attempts to look calm and collected were not aided by the jitters that pervaded his body as he came down from the multiple near-death experiences. "I knew he would be strong," Nash said, the words more contemplative than anything. "I thought the Fourth at most, since he's not even three years old. I planned to take down a Peak Fourth just in case his unique physique would..."
"They're dead, Young Master."
Leo said that sentence with enough venom to make Lacerta jealous.
"The guards?"
Leo sneered. "I don't have anything to say to that."
The Aquamarine's face twisted in rage and pain as the adrenaline began to taper off in his relatively weak First Calcification body. "You made an idiotic decision, and that's that. I can't believe that we all had to lead people we were responsible for into their deaths just because a spoiled main-family brat said we had to."
Nash's face turned as blank as if imitating Senator Emerald's trademark impassivity.
"I'm done with you!" Leo swept his hands in an arc, gesturing to the blood splattered onto all of the Emeralds and the one surviving guard. "I'm done with this! I'm done listening to your overconfident, negligent, absolute INCOMPETENCE!"
"Leo, are you done?"
Nash's voice was cold and flat. The jitters had disappeared from his body, and he stood tall, with perfect posture, eerily still with the capabilities of a Third Calcification body that barely even needed to breathe. His perfectly symmetrical face, now deep in the trough of the uncanny valley, stared disinterestedly at the Aquamarine. To each side, the other Emeralds present milled awkwardly, shifting from foot to foot and looking unsure of how to proceed.
"Ah, so you are. Good. It is time for us to leave; we can do nothing more." He began to walk, stopping mid-stride to look backwards at Leo. "I shall explain in more detail once we are safe. That is what you want, correct? An explanation?"
----------------------------------------
Another van had been waiting just outside the cordoned-off part of the city, disgorging more and more cultivators from it and ready to accept the Young Masters. Some of those cultivators stood watch, moving to support the Young Masters as soon as they were in sight and continued to guide them to the transport.
As for the rest, another force was moving out, an incredibly expensive team of Third Calcification cultivators, with a Fourth Calcification or two to lead them. Each of them took either incredible talent or valuable resources to raise to their current level at their age, the oldest among them a Fourth Calcification and only in his early seventies.
It was telling that the Emeralds could afford such a force.
It was telling that the Senator believed that they were required to stop Amusement.
Listlessly, the Young Masters and the guards surrounding them entered the van. Nash waited until last to enter, despite his former position at the head of their line, waiting until everyone else had retreated into relative safety to join them.
This van was more spartan than the one currently lying in thousands of pieces under Amusement's control had been; on each side, there was a long bench, with no separation except for seat belts, and a rod hung from the ceiling for someone standing to grip onto. As soon as they were all in, the man driving the vehicle didn't wait, not even pausing for the seat belts; immediately, he sent the vehicle rumbling down the bumpy Capital roads, aiming to get as far away from Amusement as was possible.
"At this point in the operation, namely its failure," Nash began, standing up in the aisle and not bothering to hold onto the bar. "It would be rather pointless to conceal this information." He took a deep breath, despite not needing another lungful for another minute at least. "It was my mistake to underestimate him."
Leo tried to respond to that, but Nash locked eyes with him and the Aquamarine remained silent. "There were many things I should have done. But I didn't."
A variety of expressions was visible on the Emeralds present.
Leo fumed, not bothering to conceal his anger for the sake of politeness. His entire face was scrunched in his anger, but his hateful eyes were still wide open, taking in every hated detail of Nash's face. He was sitting down, at least, but one of his hands gripped tightly at the handle of his sword, the scabbard discarded before the fight began and not retrieved since. His other hand sat on the flat of the naked blade, positioned as if to restrain it from taking Nash's head.
Sorex stared forward blankly, Lycaon looking at the Beryl with concerned eyes, his beard still soaked with blood. On Sorex's other side, his guard stayed protectively close, his hand on his weapon and his head on a swivel.
Among them all, Lacerta alone seemed unaffected, calmly cleaning the venom-injecting mechanism of her knife.
All of them were injured.
Despite their extensive training as heirs to branches of the Emerald clan, their treasures and cultivations alone had not been enough to protect them.
Nash was probably the worst out of them; one arm had been crushed and cut and bleeding for nearly the entire battle, there was a long canyon of a wound carved out on the front of his chest, and his clothes were torn in five or six places were he had just barely dodged the flying shrapnel that often swirled around Amusement.
Even with those injuries, he cut an almost heroic figure. He showed no sign of the deep exhaustion that doubtlessly pervaded him to his marrow, and seemed to feel none of the crushed bones or weeping wounds. His clothes, though torn and blood-soaked, still lent an air of dignity to his figure. Thanks to their Aetheric properties, they were only marred by tears and not by wrinkles, the ends of his sleeves undulating as if they were being softly blown in a wind obviously not present in the van. His hair, while spattered with drops of blood, was still somehow dry through some application of the Emerald arts.
The other Young Masters could not say the same.
Leo was soaked in sweat and blood, his hair weighed down by the stuff almost as much as his clothes were. He had none of the extreme injuries that Nash did, but he had many more incidental ones; a cut here, a cut there, a bruise on one shin visible only through a hole in his pants, torn by the extrication from his metal prison.
Sorex was soaked in less blood, being 'farther' away from the spray than the rest. Sweat, however, had stolen the diaphanous quality of his clothing, making it cling to his skin. His eyes were staring at nothing in particular, and they only momentarily and ponderously went to look at Nash before returning to his apparent contemplation of the floor.
Lycaon was also cut and bruised, though he had gotten off easy compared to Nash or Leo. However, due to being much more hairy than the other cultivators and in close proximity to Amusement's blood-spraying attacks, not only had his clothes and hair been soaked in blood and sweat but also his beard and body hair. With that taken into account, he looked more like some sort of feral unorthodox cultivator than the trim and proper (though hairy) Young Master he looked like before. His eyes were filled with concern, and his gaze alternated between Sorex's dejected, slumped form and Nash's standing, strength-projecting one.
Lacerta was the only one being fully attentive to Nash other than Leo, but she did it without the simmering rage that the Aquamarine showed. She was covered in blood and sweat, yes, and it had crept and dried underneath her fingernails, but it didn't seem to bother her as it did the others. She held one wrist oddly (likely having sprained it) and was covered in tiny cuts, but was otherwise uninjured.
Nash reached into a pocket and popped a high-quality healing pill into his mouth. Barely visible to the naked eye, one could see the scar tissue growing over the many cuts that marred his form. "Even with the tales of the Hidden Mountain Temple's expertise being evident everywhere we looked, and the fact that my own Father seems to fear them, I disregarded those facts."
He paused, the others remaining silent. He leaned over to the seat nearest to him and began to manually reset the bones of his battered arm, forcing the joints back into alignment.
"It was ultimately my ego that led to those preventable deaths." With a terrible series of pops and cracks that set noble teeth on edge he realigned his arm. He reached his good hand out to the driver. "A stick or something, please."
Bewildered and already stopped at an intersection, the driver rummaged through the glovebox and came out with a screwdriver. Nash shook his head. "Need something longer to set the bones."
The driver nodded and placed it back in. Nash turned back to his subordinates, still resting the broken arm on the seat with no outward sign of his pain. He tossed the small bottle of high-level healing pills to the surviving guard.
"Take one yourself, pass them around," he said. "Leo, those are intended for Third Calcification. They have minimal impurities, so the Second Calcification cultivators here should be able to take at least one without internal damage, but be careful. Maybe half, or a third of one for you."
The driver handed Nash something that appeared to be part of a slot-together collapsible tent pole. Ignoring whatever reason it was kept in the van, he put it against his bad arm and began wrapping both of them with a shimmering gauze that came from another supernaturally large yet flat pocket of his clothing. After he had tied it securely, reinforcing his broken arm, he passed the bandages around. He did not bother dressing his own cuts; they would heal well enough on their own with his Third Calcification body, supercharged as it was by the healing pills.
He stood up. "It was my fault. The only thing we have done is get some likely useless intel, dragged half our assets into a fight that will be costly to win, and backed Amusement into a corner."
Leo interrupted. It was more than a mumble than anything, but his anger still made it more than audible to all of the cultivators present. "Doesn't matter how much you apologize. They're still dead."
Nash adjusted the arm slightly, forcing the shoulder into its socket.
He took a deep breath and strode slowly down the aisle of the moving van; a few measured strides later, he stood directly in front of Leo, still bleeding from the slowly-closing wounds. "That is true."
He leaned in, his face still frozen in that eerily still, perfectly polite expression. "It is a tragedy. What it is not, however, is an excuse for you to interrupt me." Standing up, he left his looming lean and spoke once more. "Feel free to tell me your opinions on my leadership at a later date. In private."
Turning around, he regarded each of the other Young Masters in turn. "I know it may not feel that way, but we are still near enough to the battlefield that, at any moment, your lives may depend on listening to my directions."
"If you have a concern, let me know. But make sure you do it while we're safe."
In response to that, Sorex looked up from the floor at Nash and gave an unsure nod. Lycaon, upon seeing that Sorex had agreed, begrudgingly acknowledged Nash's point; still, he obviously wasn't all that excited about it.
Lacerta maintained her unaffected air, finally finished with the maintenance of her weapon. She placed the leather case back into a pocket, but kept the weapon in the open, ready for action on her lap. She rolled a small canister of poison along the knuckles of one hand.
"Lacerta, if that shatters and vaporizes will it kill anyone?" Nash asked with the exasperated voice of an elementary school teacher, or perhaps a camp counselor.
She considered that for a moment. Eventually, she seemed to come to a conclusion, slotting the vial (moderately) more safely in the handle of her knife and set it to her side.
"Good. Now, does anyone have any internal injuries they know of?" There was a general shaking of heads. "No? We'll reconvene back at the Estate, then."
----------------------------------------
Grand Harbor was quite cold this time of year.
Just to the north, the foothills of the Mountains of Howling Wind loomed drearily; each hill, no matter how large, was dwarfed by comparison to the hulks of rock and snow that rose from the earth like the teeth poking out of of a massive mandible.
It was from there, and ultimately from the mountains themselves, that blew the cold wind that buffeted the comparatively low-lying city. Being next to a large body of water, of course, had a moderating effect on that temperature. With the mountains nearby, however, that moderating simply meant that the hot days weren't as hot as they should be, and that every other day was the same bracing cold.
It was for that reason, and the Sea Serpents, of course, that much of the city was actually situated on a hill a mile or so from the more industrial and slum portions of the settlement. Surrounding the hilltop city, where all those that were able to afford it lived, was The Wall. It had some snooty, government official name, but everyone that had spent more than a week in Grand Harbor called it The Wall.
A few hundred years ago and a few ten thousand less people, it had been made out of stone, masterfully cut and polished and set in place with mortar by masons, thick enough that you could lay down on it and have only your feet hang off, and that even only if you were particularly tall. That edifice was not the only one. Looking down at the city from the air (usually passing over it to land on the nearby airstrip, which was too large to economically fit in the city itself,) you could see the layers of protection built up like the rings of a tree.
In the historical center of the city, much of which had been demolished to make space for the opulent town hall, you could still see the remains of simple, piled-stone walls where they hadn't been replaced by manors or prestigious shops.
The next layer out was the more 'middle class' area of the city, filled with well-maintained double or triple story houses and less prestigious but much more trendy restaurants and shops butting up against each other.
The old wooden wall that surrounded the place was covered in graffiti old and new, masking the wall itself; some parts were still somewhat well-maintained, but most were getting splintered and rotten by now.While some of the old wooden palisade had been removed to make room for roads and certain buildings, much of it still remained, forming one side of cramped little alleyways where children had played for generations.
From there, the walls lost their cohesion and theme. Little districts branched off like pseudopods or tumors around the previously coherent mass of the city, and many even lacked walls of their own, separated only by arterial roads or zoning regulations.
Then there was the wall that the residents called The Wall. After the incident that had left the previous wall seemingly inadequate, the one made of thick, mason-cut stone, the government of Grand Harbor decided that an upgrade was in order.
The Wall was made of steel. That was a poor description, but it was the best place to start.
To make The Wall, many thousands of thick sheets of steel (each a bit less than a half inch* thick) had been riveted together and covered first in paint and later with galvanic coatings to protect it from seawater. In the middle of the construction, arc welding had been invented, so in the newer-constructed sections one could see the abrupt shift from rivets to welds holding it together.
One could even follow the wall and see the welds become more and more skillful as time went on, and the patch-jobs that had been hastily applied to the older, less sturdy welds.
Steel wasn't the only material used, however. The foundation of The Wall was made of concrete, and buildings of brick and steel rose up behind it, watchtowers to alert of roaming Aether Beasts or to project force from.
At regular intervals, ballistae were placed on The Wall, pivoting on creaky, rusty joints that allowed them to swivel and incline up and down. Any cultivator worth the name would likely be able to dodge the bolts, but much larger things (such as Sea Serpents) were both much too large to be able to dodge them effectively and technically not invulnerable to being poisoned or electrocuted.
The most defended points were the massive gates. There were two, one on the south and one on the east, and to enter or leave the city (legally, at least) you had to choose one of them. The gates themselves were massive, tall enough to accommodate several cars stacked on top of each other, and wide enough to encompass the multiple lanes of traffic and guard checkpoints. Above the nearly perpetually-open gates were the doors that hung like blades of a guillotine, each one ready to slam down and close off the city in mere minutes.
There were, of course, the industrial areas near the water and the slums between them and butting up as close as they legally could to the walls, but those areas were not currently the concern of Rigel Feldspar.
Old Man Looking-In had just passed the checkpoint. He drove a small car, old enough that it was practically considered an antique; the body was rusting in some places and the engine whined, but it still drove well.
In the Aether, it was the center of a writhing ball of plant matter and bulbous eyes.
The vines coiled around each other, slipping past each other with such precision and ease that it seemed that their movements had been choreographed in advance. Each of the movements was to position the eyes to track whatever cultivator the eye had locked onto, tracking their movements and adjusting for their own movement, attached to the car as they were; each component moved in an endless, effortless dance of writhing adjustments.
The car slowed and came to a stop, pulling into the entrance for one of the underground parking lots that provided most of the city's car storage.
Not too long after, the old man emerged from that same entrance, walking the streets until he came to his actual destination.
His knuckles rapped on the door of a small Martial Academy, run out of a small studio pressed tightly between a sandwich shop and a liquor store. The exterior of the building had obviously been whitewashed, though it hadn't been for a while; a wooden sign was hung just above the door, advertising the 'Striking Vine Martial Academy & Mathematics Tutoring Center.'
Just barely able to hear the muffled shout of "Come in!" from the inside over the roaring of cars speeding past just behind him, Rigel pushed the door open and stepped within.
A bell rang with the door's opening and when it closed behind the old man, the bright tone only momentarily masking the sounds of traffic just outside. He walked through the hallway, his shoes silent against the polished but scratchy hardwood floor and his eyes (physical and on Aetheric vines) glancing at the pictures of students and examples of beautiful but somehow scratchy calligraphy hung on the walls.
He walked past the stairs, marked off with a sign not to enter, and went onto the main floor. A young man, probably in his early to mid twenties - or rather, looked like a mortal would look in that age range - leaned a broom and dustpan against the wall and turned to speak to Rigel, seemingly expecting the old man.
"Hello, Master. You had not informed me you would be visiting so soon."
"Ah, sharp as ever. Do you have time to have tea with me? It has been a long trip."
"You didn't exactly try to disguise your approach, Master." The younger man picked the dustpan back up and emptied it into the trash, hanging it on a hook affixed to the wall. He did the same with the broom, gesturing for his master to follow him.
"I could feel your eyes lock onto mine in the Aether. It was a bit discouraging, mind you - I've put into so much effort into learning how to conceal them," he said, pushing past the sign blocking the stairs and gesturing for the old man to follow him.
This part of the building was much more cramped than the downstairs, but organized much more cozily; a bookshelf contained not only an eclectic collection of math textbooks, printed-out academic papers organized neatly in small plastic boxes, and more standard novels and martial arts books, but also his teaware on a particularly wide shelf. He pulled out the small bamboo box that contained that and his tea and placed it on the table in the middle of the room.
As he removed what he needed from it, he directed Old Man Looking-In to sit down at one of the only two chairs on the table.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
"So," he said, sitting down himself and waiting for the kettle, already on the table and filled with water, to boil, "To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?"
"Ah, simple obligations. The old friend I told you about called in a favor, but on a happier note, I have a few more stories to tell you." He accepted the cup of tea with a thankful nod. "I still have a day or two until I have to go to the actual coast, and this place was on the way, so why not drop in?"
"Stories, huh? What about?"
"Oh, there was this young man that called himself Greenstone. Now that I think of it, I wonder how he's doing right now; I should send a few eyes to check up, I suppose. You said you were working on hiding the eyes?"
From there, the conversation turned to the more usual topics they discussed. They swapped insights on their cultivations, they talked about their disciples and students, and Old Man Looking-In attempted to follow his disciple's summaries of recent discoveries (or the lack of them) in the fields of mathematics he was interested in.
Throughout the conversation, hundreds of vines already present in Grand Harbor awoke and began tying themselves back into Rigel's perception.
Much farther inland, a single vine came was roused out of hibernation and received a new directive.
----------------------------------------
Nash looked quizzically at the driver as the van came to a sudden stop, the brakes screeching.
"What are you doing?" he asked, his good hand fidgeting with the portion of the Emerald Flail he was currently keeping in the physical world, wrapping and weaving it back and forth through his fingers; mostly, it was to distract him from the maddening itching of his rapidly healing wounds. By now, his many cuts and bruises had closed up and his arm, while still quite tender and not fully healed, was at least somewhat on its way, but that did little to restrain his urge to claw at the tender skin to alleviate the itching.
"Sir, there's someone in the road."
His muscles tensed and he stood from his seat, his knees soft and his good hand curled into a fist. "Is it Amusement? Are they wearing an apron? Who is it?" The questions were rattled out one after another with incredible speed, each one curt and nearly spat out of his mouth.
"No," the driver said, confused, that syllable drawing out longer and longer as he considered his next words. "It's some gutter trash, by the looks of it. He's unkempt and there's smoke coming off of him."
"Oh." Nash sighed in relief. "Run him over."
"Sir?"
"You heard me. From the sound of it, he's from the Crimson Bonfire Gang; they tried to kill me a few months ago."
The driver considered that for a second, before giving a shrug to nobody in particular and stepping on the gas. Who would dare to sue the Emeralds, after all?
The van accelerated with a roar of the engine; the astounded gang member was forced to dive to the side, out of the way of the speeding vehicle.
Nash watched through the rear view mirror as the Boss of the Crimson Bonfire Gang became smaller and smaller with distance. He groaned with the tone of someone burdened by a responsibility, one they knew they would regret not fulfilling sooner rather than later.
"Stop. I've gotta go out there and kill him or he'll keep being a thorn in my side."
While the astounded driver was just barely stepping on the brakes, he walked towards the door and rested his hand on the handle. "Just keep watch from a good distance. Get out of here and be ready to loop around if it looks like he has any friends." Still sighing, Nash pushed the door open and jumped down onto the asphalt, his knees bending to receive the force of his fall with all the poise the Emeralds were known for.
"I'm afraid you caught me in quite a bad mood," he began, the Boss of the Crimson Bonfire Gang already running and charging towards him.
Contemptuously, he stepped out of the way of the first strike; it was a heavy, angry attack, all asphalt-shattering stomps propelling the Boss forward and ribbons of smoke contracting around his body to fling his punching arm forward in a colossally powerful punch, though a predictable one. "You see," Nash continued, slipping behind the Boss's back and pushing him even further through his unbalanced charge with a perfect teep to the kidney, "I'm fresh from another fight, and one I unfortunately did not win. I suppose we can't simply call this off? I've never even seen you in person."
The Boss picked himself up from his stumble, launching into another reckless attack, this time a sliding kick that ate the distance between them in mere fractions of a second.
This time, Nash simply slipped back, dipping a small trough of flesh into the Aether to just barely avoid the attack.
The Boss's booted foot sped across Nash's body, hitting nothing and skimming just above the image of his intestines exposed to open air, an image that was covered up by his flesh and clothes in that spot reappearing only a moment later.
"Come on," Nash said, incredulous, still cradling his broken arm to his body. "I'm injured and you still can't get a hit in. I don't even know what I did to you, and yet you dare to attack the Emerald heir so brazenly."
"SHUT! UP!" Each word was punctuated by a powerful punch; first a hook, then an overhand, and each one was parried by Nash's good hand.
Instead of simply batting away the overhand, Nash grabbed onto it and used it to pull the larger man into his kick, aimed to break his knee. Instead of the shattering of bone that Nash had expected, his kick simply glanced off of an angled sheet of smoke that shouldn't have been solid.
Nash recovered quickly, following the direction of the glance and ducking under the Boss's arm, using his footwork to appear to the gang boss's side once again.
"WHY!"
Nash swung the Emerald Flail at the ganger's unprotected head, ducking under a retaliatory punch as it glanced off of the Boss's blocking arm. "I feel like I'm lacking some context here," he said, reaching into a pocket and throwing one of the few firecrackers he had left after the drawn-out battle with Amusement. It hit the Boss square between the eyes and exploded into light and smoke and heat that sent him backwards, clawing at his eyes even as more smoke erupted from his screaming mouth.
Nash kicked once again, this one a forceful round kick going straight into the Boss's vulnerable ribs. This time, he felt that satisfying crack, breaking at least one of the man's ribs.
The Boss screamed in pain once more, this more the wrathful roar of an animal than the shout of a man. He lashed out once again with a flurry of blows,
"Really? I don't have all day, you know."
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The Boss was blinded with rage.
It was him in front of him. It was him that was why he was brought to this state.
It was the Emerald who had undermined his control. It was the Emerald who had somehow broken his treasure, destroying any hope the Boss had for further advancement.
"WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY!" He screamed as he lashed out, not sure why he said the words himself. "WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY -"
A jab rocked him in the teeth, stopping his endless repetition of the single word done with every reckless attack he threw.
He tasted blood mixed with smoke in his mouth. He tasted pain in his mouth, in his ribs, in his blocking arms and striking fists. In his mind's eye, he saw a shattered crystal; reflected in every scintillating shard was the laughing face of the Emerald, the Emerald who was here, who was vulnerable.
His channels were fraying.
It was a rare consequence of deviating from one's technique, of going too far, too fast for such a pedestrian thing on such little talent. The stolen technique at the core of his cultivation was was incomplete, and the cutting edges of the lost information weaved porosity into the walls of his channels.
He knew that the Motorcycle Rider had completed it somehow; whether stolen or bought or inferred or substituted, the Boss did not know, but he knew that the dead man's technique was better than his.
The Boss had never managed to complete it. Instead, he had pushed further and further; the fraying was stable, and as long as he had his treasure to repair the flaws his haste and poor technique had created, he could continue pushing.
As long as he had the crystal, he could continue cultivating, continue progressing.
As long as he had his treasure, he could avoid falling behind in that deadly race he had staked his life upon.
Then, of course, it began to shatter. Even then, he still had a shred of hope - perhaps it would slow down, or give him enough time to find a replacement, or he could use his resources to repair it in time.
Even with his frayed channels, he could continue to cultivate with his treasure, continue progressing, bit-by-bit, even as it slowed.
Now? With channels so frayed that any push to increase his cultivation would cause them to delaminate altogether, thousands of tiny leaks cracked into open wounds in the blink of an eye?
He would be forced to stand still or completely degenerate, helplessly watching as his competitors, his would-be murderers, rushed past him.
One of them paused to stand in above him of him, looking down at him, looming with a smile on his teeth and a laugh in his throat.
The lowly cashier who had sinned against his pride.
The noble born Emerald who killed his men, endangered his position, looked down at him as if he could see the soot-fingered thief stabbing an old man in the night and leaving him in the gutter. As if he could see the blood of the old man mixing with alley-dirt and plastic trash, as the Motorcycle Rider, not old enough for that name to have yet taken that name, spat at the corpse, prying the crumbling book out of the still-clasped hands.
His mind returned to the present, where the Emerald was watching him, unmoving, with those mocking eyes.
The Boss spat blood onto the pavement. Smoke came out with the spittle and ichor, some dissolved within and some as a cloud from his lips, a discrete mass of foul smoke rising into the air and disappearing into the polluted skyline.
"Done with the reminiscing?"
The Boss's eye twitched at not only the words, but the tone. The tone that mocked him. Smoke came off his body in waves, like a bonfire with hundreds of squares of plastic-laminated paper and pressurized wood tossed in, the incredible heat of the conflagration burning it all alike and sending the noxious gasses into the lungs of any present.
He charged forward, then past the Emerald as the target of his wrath disappeared into nothing. Something slammed into his back, a rope-lashing that sent waves of pain radiating from that one point. He felt like stumbling forward, he felt like getting out of the way.
Instead, like the gutter rat he was, he changed strategies. With all the speed and strength of his Third Calcification cultivation, he spun on the spot and lashed out with his boot.
For the first time, his heel hit something.
For the first time, the Emerald hissed in pain.
The Boss's foot landed back on solid asphalt; he had spun all the way around to where he faced the young nobleman, the gutter rat's fists already raised.
"You know what? I don't have time for this." The Emerald was clutching his re-injured arm close to his body, hissing through his teeth in pain and genuine anger on his face for the first time in the fight, his expression singing to the Boss's smoke-stained soul. "You're dead for that. I gave you a chance, remember that while you're underground. Sorex, something sharp for me, if you will."
The Emerald's hand reached out, as if waiting for something to be put into it. Very soon, something was, a Second Calcification cultivator appearing from the idling van and taking only three steps there and back.
The Emerald jumped slightly, and the Boss readied himself for a lunging attack. Then, the Emerald disappeared.
Then, the Boss felt something stab into the base of his neck, severing an artery.
His smoke tapered off as his muscles went limp, as his vision went dark, as he collapsed to the ground clutching at the gushing wound. The microscopic spores that laid dormant in his muscles went into a feeding frenzy, building hyphae large enough to see with the naked eye in mere seconds, masked only by the blood weeping from the wound.
A thief died on the asphalt, but not quite.
----------------------------------------
Nash was getting tired of hospitals.
This one was not the same as the last two he had visited; it was, of course, owned privately by the Emeralds, but it was situated slightly outside of the Emerald Estate. It was most frequently used by the branch families and the occasional wealthy but unestablished family, one of the few high-end facilities of its type that was open to anyone who paid.
Nash, of course, had been assigned to their very best doctors and most expensive treatments as soon as they had heard 'Emerald.' Currently, he was sitting motionless inside of an MRI, radiologists fussing over the machine as it whirred and scanned his insides.
His arm had been adjusted and set once more, this time in a much more professional splint, and a variety of pills and topical treatments had been given to avoid whatever scarring they could with the already somewhat-healed cuts. To their obvious distress and to Nash's amusement, many of the larger cuts had already scarred over; without a much higher-quality treatment, those blemishes were there to stay.
He had no doubt that it wouldn't take long for the Patriarch to find out and authorize such a thing, but unless he was terribly injured he would likely be able to make a case for refusing something that expensive. His Father had taken him mostly out of the public eye recently, after all.
He sighed once more; that exasperation and guilt seemed to be inescapably returning time and time again here in the MRI, where there was nothing to consider outside himself.
That separation from the public eye was equal parts curse and blessing. Now, at the very least, he had some time to truly cultivate, to grow, rather than the infrequent and short bursts he had been forced into for many years.
But to accompany that victory, his Father had used that separation and the knowledge he used to buy it as an excuse to assign him to this case. The case that had led to the deaths of all those attendants, including his own. They knew what they were getting into, he thought, suppressing the churning in his gut
Not too long after (though still much longer than Nash would have preferred it to be,) he was slid out of the MRI and set back in front of another nurse or doctor or radiologist or some other medical official; Nash had stopped bothering with keeping track of the half-dozen or so that had spoken to him directly with the absence of his guard.
"We haven't detected any more internal damage," the medical staff said, glancing down at a printed-out sheet of information Nash knew not how to interpret. He turned to another page. "Regardless, the recommended action is the same. Take healing powder in water every two days, avoid use of your injured arm, and keep it in the cast. Additionally, the blood sample found something odd..."
"And that is?" Nash asked, no impatience creeping into his voice despite the abundance of it running circles through his internal monologue.
"There were fungal spores found inside your bloodstream. They were likely inhaled somehow; we do not know how dangerous they are as of yet, but we have prescribed an antifungal pill, to be taken before bed each night."
He pulled two sheets of paper and handed them to Nash. They were prescriptions, all columns of black text with that unevenly inked style of printing that sort of document always seemed to possess, where some letters were dark and thick as if the same letter had been layered over itself more than once and others were mere wisps, more suggestions of a symbol than an actual letter.
"Samples of the spores have been sent to a medical mycologist for further analysis. We will contact you with the results once they are in."
Nash nodded, and gave the standard assortment of polite thanks and disengagements from the conversation before going to the lobby to await the other Young Master's discharge.
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"What were you thinking?"
From anyone else's mouth, those words would be dripping with derision. Anyone else's face would be twisted into rage or disappointment or despair while saying those words. Instead of any of those emotions showing on his face, if he even felt them at all, the Patriarch looked placid, uncaring of the financial and living cost his son's actions had brought upon the Clan.
Nash's father made the question sound like nothing more than polite conversation; a phrase with the same expected impact as "How are the kids doing," or "How's the wife?"
For his part, Nash played at no such unaffected affectation.
He was knelt on the ground in front of the desk, his hands resting on his knees, his head inclined to the floor rather than his father's face. "I was not, Father. I underestimated him."
"That," the Senator said, rolling the word around in his mouth as if savoring the taste of it, "Is not what I was hoping to hear."
Nash didn't respond to that, his head dipping farther down in deference and shame.
"You wasted lives and many other resources belonging to the Clan." Those words were said without judgment, without reproach, without anything.
"Yes, Father. I made a foolish decision."
"Praytell*, what was this attack for?" The Patriarch shuffled papers on his immaculately clear desk, everything in its proper place and polished to perfection or laid out in neat piles across the expansive but neat surface.
Nash grimaced, hoping his father could not sense the expression. "It was my hope that we could... neutralize and capture the threat. From the information gathering you had assigned me, I had come to the conclusion that Amusement would be equivalent to perhaps the Fourth Calcification, pushed to the Peak of that realm by his unique physique."
The Patriarch's finger tapped once on the table, instantly silencing the further explanation Nash had prepared.
"I assume that was why you mobilized an inadequate force consisting mostly of valuable branch family heirs and placed them into danger, not seeing the importance of requesting permission or the resources actually required for such a scheme to actually succeed?"
Nash opened his mouth to respond, but the words caught in his throat. A dejected "Yes, Father," was all he could manage in the end.
The Patriarch looked down directly at his son for probably the first time in the conversation. "You are going to compile a report, compiling and summarizing every piece of information you have gathered during this case, every expense, and what you believe the information means for our understanding of the Hidden Mountain Temple."
"Yes, Father."
"It shall be written to be the definitive description of that Temple. It shall be on my desk by the end of the week. Afterwards, I shall consider your punishment for this infraction. You are dismissed."
"Yes, Father," Nash said once more, standing up and giving a deep bow and martial salute. He turned about-face and walked out the door, his heart pounding.
The door clicked shut behind him, and the new batch of guards fanned out to stay on each side of him.
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In this city, subway tunnels always smelt of rot.
Perhaps it was because no new tunnels had been built since the last Emperor had been slain. Perhaps it was because the tunnels were still discolored from where old blood had dried and rotted and flaked off, even those remnants rotting into nothing but a mark on concrete.
But here, in this place, rot was not the only smell. Flowers bloomed in the lightless abyss, things of pink and red and white.
If one looked closely, you could see how they were odd, not made of petals but rather hard masses of fungus. But if one was close enough to see that, they could also see the single eye set in each one. Most of them were unmoving, underdeveloped or locked away behind still furled 'petals' of mycelium and twisted sheets of hyphae.
Others, more developed and established in the cracks of the concrete, glanced greedily through the dark room, their blood red pupils the only spots of illumination in this part of the underground; that deep red light showed mostly the thick haze that drifted through here, collecting on the walls and dripping down like the blood that once stained this place.
By that measly light, the corpses were barely visible.
There were dozens of them. Each one was in different stages of exsanguination, the blood drained from their bodies and into the shelves of woody fungus sprouting from their chests. Where once they were few enough to be laid carefully against the wall, now they were haphazardly strewn throughout the artificial cavern.
Four instances of Senior Sister scuttled on their five arms, not only on the corpse-strewn floor but also the fungus-infected walls and ceiling.
Behind each of them trailed more malformed instances, tiny failures to approximate her form. These failures were varied, but all rather small, no larger than a tightly clenched fist when they curled into themselves in an approximation of rest. Some were short and stubby, stumbling forth on their failures of fingers or lopsided arms, while others were long and spindly and slow, their ponderous strides propelling them forward as they tended to the flowers.
There were hundreds of them.
One instance went to the front of the cave; mycelium had been compressed slightly, alerting the whole colony. A man in the robes of the Majestic Cloud Sect knelt by the entrance of the tunnel.
All the eyes were focused on him, and a tendril of fungus had reached out from behind his eye to link with Senior Sister. This one was another extension; unlike the girl, this one was too strong for a full Instance to grow within him, but he could still be influenced.
The Patriarch of the Majestic Cloud Sect knelt to communicate with his master.
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The Beryl Family Manor was empty. It always was.
A small army of servants kept it in good shape, of course. Every surface was impeccably dusted, perfectly polished, laid out specifically to Sorex's needs.
But the servants themselves were never to be seen. They had their own secret ways through the centuries-old manor, secret passages that went through nearly every room that didn't present a risk for the assassination of a nobleman in his sleep.
One of the few times Sorex had been scolded was when, as a child, he had used his distance to pull himself through one of the miniscule peepholes built into the dining room's wall. He had decided to do it because he had barely glimpsed a servant's robe out of the corner of his eye; the single set of dishes, an opulent spread laid out on the table built to accommodate more than a single person had been left forgotten, the teacup clattering against the saucer.
Sorex, only eight years old, had spent the better part of an hour wandering through the seemingly endless tunnels, marveling at the piece of his home he had never seen before.
The next day, when his tutor came over, he had been scolded.
It was an odd feeling. It was already odd when the tutor came over; he was on a regular schedule, but Sorex's life ways always too regimented, too same for the concept of days and nights and weeks and months to sink in in any real capacity until much later. When the tutor had left that day, he had felt even more lonely than before.
The good days were when Uncle Longstep came in and told his old war stories. Uncle Longstep treated him like a beloved grandchild, not an unapproachable object of service. But Uncle Longstep never stayed long.
He always had his duty. Sorex knew a lot about duty.
Duty was when he could go outside and talk to people. Duty was when he didn't know what to say. Duty was when he cringed inwards at the wondered gazes of his generation.
The gazes of someone beholding an endangered species, one they thought long extinct.
Most of the Beryls were dead. Sorex knew about that too. He wasn't the only one still alive. But he was the only one in the manor.
That was why it was so weird for him to talk to the Emerald and the Morganite.
The Heliodor was more like what he was used to; always focused on the goal in front of her, not bothering with asking how Sorex had gotten so familiar with the Beryl archives that he could immediately pull out a relevant text whenever she went to him for help. There was a sort of comfort in that. The Aquamarine was standoffish, especially whenever Nash was in the room, but he was polite enough, just apparently unsure of how to handle Sorex. That, too, was something he was used to.
The Emerald was also easy to comprehend; he was nice, too, but only the sort of nice that a superior was expected to give their subordinates, and he seemed to always be in motion, always doing something. That was foreign, but nothing Sorex hadn't seen before.
The Morganite - no, he wanted to be called Lycaon - though?
Lycaon was weird. He was hairy and laughing and never afraid to ask for help or even ask if Sorex needed any. He was quiet when one of them were surprised or scared, like in the van, but nearly all the rest of the time he was talking about this or that and asking Sorex a dozen questions a minute.
At first, when he had finally arrived back at the manor from the hospital, it was comforting.
Now, it just felt wrong for everything to be silent. There was none of the Morganite's chattering or the Aquamarine's scowling or the Heliodor's polite but cold mannerisms or the Emerald's directions. It just felt weird and quiet now.
The only sounds were the clinking of his fork against the fine porcelain plate as he ate his dinner and the scuffing of his shoes against the ground.
He drank the last drop of his tea and set the cup back on the saucer, standing up and turning around. When he turned back and sat down, the cup was full again. The servants of the Beryl manor were never to be seen.
His eyes wandered in the direction of the library once more. "The Hidden Mountain Temple, huh?"
"Might as well look a bit more into it."
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Amusement disappeared into the rot-stricken tunnels once more, drenched in blood.
It was a waste of lums to kill any more of the emerald goons. They were nothing but a hindrance, and he gained nothing from their deaths; they had even stopped being amusing, even the struggles of the thunder-throwing one turning into nothing but a hindrance.
Therefore, he had retreated into these tunnels; he had no more excuses to make to his duty, forced to hunt down his quarry once more. His face blank, he stood still in a place where the tunnel diverged. He smelt the air, searching for the artificially sweet scent of his Senior Sister's machinations.
He turned in the direction of the fungus, still nearly a mile away, and rifled through the pockets of his apron until he found what he was looking for. Dispassionately, he regarded the supplies he had brought; a small bottle of flammable lubricant, a simple rag, and a lighter. They would have to do until he had the materials to construct greater weapons.
He trudged down the tunnel, a respiratory mask of steel and activated charcoal cloth climbing out of another pocket of his apron, cinching to his face on its own.