A man gasped, and sat up from the cold stainless steel table he had been set upon.
His skin was bare and cold and clinging to the smooth surface of the table, and despite his cultivation, he shivered as he panted; gulps of cold air filled his aching lungs as he hyperventilated, the tips of his fingers and toes as fuzzy as his thoughts. Questions raced through his head, one after another. Some of the more pertinent ones included his internal inquiries on why he was in a morgue, why he was naked, why his neck felt so sore, and why the tips of his limbs felt so cold despite his high cultivation.
Less immediately important but just as concerning was the fact that he could not remember his name, or why he was so sure his cultivation was rather high. It was in the Third, right? He remembered being proud of that at some point, but he couldn't remember why.
He slid himself off of the table, knocking over a small cart full of instruments; scalpels, plastic bottles of unknown fluids, and other things that the man could not identify were sent sliding wildly across the tile floor, all done in a sterile white. He winced as he stepped on a scalpel, the delicate instrument bending under his foot, and he gingerly raised it up and plucked it off his foot. In the process of that, however, he caught his reflection on the table out of the corner of his eye.
It was not something he recognized, but even still, it felt so familiar, so him.
Greedily, he hunched over the table, staring into his own eyes and taking in every ugly detail; his face was brutish and sharklike and still bloody from whatever had convinced people he belonged in a morgue, and when he opened his mouth he saw his teeth. They were blackened and some were filed into points, while in other spots the glint of metal fillings, gold and silver both, could be seen.
This was him. It felt like pride and shame and something else; bewilderment, probably, though with his absent memories he was unsure whether he was using that word right. Then his eyes drifted down, looking at his still-aching neck, and he recoiled at the sight.
Instead of the bruise or mass of scar tissue he had expected, there had instead been a single mass of fungal material. Curious, he brought his finger up to it and touched the thousands of strands of hyphae woven into a sheet, and his finger too was forced back when the motion brought a shooting pain to accompany the soreness that called his neck home. Revolted but interested, he looked at it with more and more scrutiny, looking as it pulsated with the beat of his heart and flexed with his breath.
The strands were not all parallel, but they were ordered, woven together in an apparently deliberate manner - was it something the doctors had done? Was this not a morgue, but a surgical room?
He squatted down and picked up one of the plastic containers; it was formaldehyde, so that hypothesis was unlikely, at least to his admittedly poor medical knowledge, which matched well with his poor knowledge on, well, everything.
"Well, it seems you're not one prone to worry. Good."
The voice belonged to a man he could not recognize, and didn't seem to come from anywhere in particular. He stood up, his head whipping back and forth as he attempted to spot the stranger. "Who are you? Where are you? Come out!" he shouted, his voice cracking at the last one. He recognized the voice that came out of his mouth. It was the same as the stranger's.
"Not that bright, though. Stop looking around." The man did not comply, his eyes still scanning for any sign of the stranger with the familiar voice.
"Oh, you idiot. Look back at the table, at your neck; that should make it clearer to you."
This time, he followed the voice's directions, carefully pacing back to stare at his reflection in the polished metal of the table. From his neck, an eye stared out, a dull red glow coming from it, barely visible in the bright but sterile fluorescent lighting beaming down from the ceiling. It was all done in shades of sterile, uninviting blue that gave the crimson eye a washed-out effect. "What are you?" he wondered, the word trailing off with deep consideration. "You're... inside me?"
The eye rolled around in the mycelium 'socket,' and the man saw his own mouth move; despite the movement of one of his own body parts, it didn't feel like it was him doing it, and it was only because he was watching it that he could notice it at all. "Good thinking genius. We'll make you a winner yet. Now, onto your question?" The eye looked up and to the left, an unmistakably human gesture despite its obvious inhuman nature. "What I am? You can think of me as your manager."
"Manager?"
"Echo, echo, echo~" It laughed. "More importantly, I'm a parasite. I was placed in you to make sure that shiny lil' Third Calcification corpse wouldn't go to waste."
"What do you mean corpse? What do you want?"
"Patience, patience." The man felt some sort of squeezing on his spine and, suddenly, every drop of fear and anxiety left him. "That better? Good. Now we can talk without you freaking out on me."
"What was that?" This time, the question came from a place of genuine curiosity rather than defensive, fearful information-gathering.
"Oh, just a little adjustment of your brain function. Same thing I used to lock away your memories, actually."
"What?" That word was nothing but confusion; doubtlessly, without the emotional suppression of the parasite, it would have been tinged with a touch more incoherent rage.
"A little trick; there's a need for a carrot as well as a stick*, and greed for your memories will do quite fine, especially for an obsessive little robber like you." The eye darted back and forth playfully, or at least as playfully as such an unnatural 'creature' could manage. "Unfortunately, much of the energy I had been seeded with was spent in keeping your sorry behind alive, and that left little to construct a consciousness capable of much more than rudimentary planning and emotional manipulation."
Confused, the man leaned onto the table, looking deeper into the single eye sprouting from his hyphae-scarred neck.
"For now, I need you. Congratulations! Welcome to the team; you don't have a choice."
The thief opened his mouth in an attempt to object, but it started speaking the parasite's words instead. "I can't move. Or plan. Or think, really, on my own - this is all running off your 'hardware,' you could say. So, what do you say? I give you your memories, help you remember that revenge you wanted and your life before all this, and you keep us alive and working towards my Mother's goals?"
Reluctantly, the man nodded in assent.
----------------------------------------
Crackling fire and choking smoke cut through the smell of the rot, waves of toxic byproducts of the burning fungus and corpses washing past Amusement's body. Even with the mask of steel and cloth, he did not dare to breathe too frequently, lest he become bewitched by what remained of the floral pheromones; they had been masterfully designed with Temple techniques, some of them rediscovered by Senior Sister herself, to seduce even cultivators to lay down and die.
Behind the mask, his face was impassive as he watched the mistakes of instances burn and writhe in the flames. Under normal circumstances, that sight would have begun sating the hole in his soul, but even that was pushed away by his duty.
When he had arrived, there had been no sign of Senior Sister or her true instances; additionally, the pink shelves of mushroom that stored the blood and lums of her victims had all been carted away to some place Amusement could not tell, leaving nothing but blood-drained corpses and deformed, disposable instances.
What was she doing?
And how could he stop it?
----------------------------------------
The Patriarch of the Emerald Clan sat behind his desk. His son stood on the other side of it, offering a manila folder in the traditional way, accompanied with a bow.
Senator Emerald took the paper, unimpressed by the formality; he placed it on the mahogany-and-ivory table top of the desk. Behind him, a gold and green tapestry of the Emerald Crest hung, proudly displaying the Patriarch’s affiliation to his family, or rather that family’s affiliation to him. Nash stepped back with a precise, polite movement, his hands now clasped behind his back. His shoes, a formal style, made no sound as they dragged against the marble floor and made only a minimal sound upon clicking together afterwards as he came to attention.
The Young Master's attire matched the room - all prim and proper and made to precise standards, done up in the elegant but uncolorful whites and browns of the room, the sameness of the outfit broken up only by a green-and-gold waistcoat peeking out from within his suit-and-robes. He stood silently like that for a moment as his father looked through the report, complied with more than one sleepless night and the input (and scrutiny) of all the other Young Masters under his command.
Personally, he had read and re-read it probably a half-dozen times, searching for any little error in information or presentation, hoping that it would be at least acceptable to his father's standards. With the sound of wobbling, creasing paper, the Patriarch collected the report in one hand. He opened a drawer and put it inside.
The drawer closed, and Nash felt his father's eyes on him. "Acceptable. Your punishment shall be minimal."
Nash narrowly resisted slumping in relief, maintaining that same stiff, respectful posture. "Thank you, Patriarch," he said, giving a martial salute. "What is my punishment?"
Another drawer opened, and the Patriarch pulled out a manila folder, opening it and laying out the contents on the table. The papers were all aligned facing towards the Young Master, inviting him to read them; Nash did so, his head dipping down the minimum amount that still allowed his eyes to skim the paper's contents.
"This is to be your punishment," the Senator said, tapping at an image printed on one of the papers. "As you obviously believe you can do things without my direction, I shall leave you to your folly; you shall receive minimal direction."
"And the task?"
"So impatient," the Patriarch said, leaning backwards in his chair. For a moment, he glanced back at the tapestry hung behind him and the Emerald standard woven into it. "Remind me. What is the cost of replacing a cultivator?"
"It depends on the realm and the expertise," Nash replied, unsure of how to answer.
The Patriarch paused for a moment and, despite the lack of any change of expression, Nash felt a jolt of fear; he had known his father for long enough to know that was the only interpretable expression of displeasure the Patriarch allowed himself to display.
"That is technically correct, but not what I was asking. I shall be more blunt this time. What resources do you believe we shall require to replace the lives you lost?"
Nash stayed silent as he tabulated the expressions in his head, wishing desperately it would not be a breach of etiquette to pull out a piece of paper to sort out his thoughts. "There were eight attendants dead in the initial battle," he said, a sour taste in his mouth at being forced to tally the cessation of human lives, one that had occured under his command and through his orders. "One Third Calcification cultivator. The others were mostly in the Second Calcification."
The Patriarch was impassive, no sign of impatience or interest visible in his placid, unmoving face.
"The cost and time requirements depend on whether the cultivators are to be hired from the outside or brought up within the Clan," he continued. "The Second Calcification cultivators would be the easiest to replace, of course, and wouldn't be impossible to hire outright with the required cultivation. However, it would be rather expensive to not only find them but to convince them, and their loyalty could not be assured." He stopped speaking for a moment, waiting for a response or chastisement, but none came.
Nervously but in as composed of a manner he could muster, he continued. "The Third Calcification cultivator... that would be more difficult. It wouldn't be strictly impossible to find one to hire, but it would be many times more expensive than any individual Second Calcification cultivator, and they would be even more likely to be attached to another force, possibly an antagonistic one." Taking a deep breath, he ran through the figures in his head one more time. "Raising them from within is about as expensive, if not more so, but supply is much less of a concern, as is the issue of loyalty. The main issue with that approach, though, is that it still requires talent and time to raise a cultivator to even the First Calcification, let alone to the Third."
"It can be accelerated with certain resources, but that should only be considered if personnel are needed that urgently. Resources of that type can raise a cultivator to new heights quickly, but it can reduce their ability to progress further, if they had any to begin with." His spiel finished, Nash stood politely with his hands behind his back, nervously fidgeting with his fingers. They intertwined and separated again and again, him feeling more than a little like a child who had just finished giving a presentation in class, one he was unsure of whether it would pass.
"So you do understand the amount you have cost the Clan," the Patriarch said; his words had an abstract quality, as if speaking not about a massive sum of money or many lost lives, but rather helping his son with math homework he didn't quite understand, and being entirely uninterested in the whole process. "Why, then, did you take such a foolhardy action?"
Nash flinched, fighting the impulse to wince and look away. It was rare for the Patriarch to be so emotional; in a normal person, that last sentence would have been a fit of yelling or weeks of passive-aggressive action, but the Senator had a much more efficient outlook on things; he liked to compress the whole affair down into one cutting remark and be done with it.
"Don't bother looking sorry; you always were too emotional. Resources have been lost, they must be recovered; it is that simple. You shall be the one to recover them, as compensation."
"How shall I do that, Father?"
The Patriarch motioned for Nash to pick up the papers for himself, and Nash obliged, holding them in front of him and letting them dangle from the single corner held in his clasped hands.
"Now, you are not fully prepared to do this entirely on your own, but you shall have significant discretion on how you perform your tasks. Perhaps it will develop your decision-making skills; recent events have shown they need some work."
"Yes, Father."
"I shall be gracious and not include the ones who died outside of that 'task force' you led," he said, the emphasis on 'task force' making it clear he considered what Nash had constructed anything but. "But of the eight that died, you shall be expected to replace them. Seven in the Second Calcification that can be trusted, one in the Third, or the resources to raise those of sufficient talent to those levels, or a mixture of both summing to the same amount."
His head hanging, Nash gave a salute. "I understand, Patriarch."
"Dismissed."
----------------------------------------
When the attendant had followed Leo into one of the many training rooms of the Aquamarine estate, he had already been prepared for another loathsome assignment. Politely, he had taken the sealed envelope and nodded, sending the servant away and making sure he was entirely out of sight before he opened the letter; all the while, a smile remained on his face, a light, polite one that was only barely large enough to be noticeable, and entirely a fiction.
His worst suspicions were confirmed as soon as he opened the envelope and looked inside. Apparently, it wasn't enough that he was forced to work under an egotistical, pompous, halfwitted main family brat.
No, he had to risk life and limb in ill-considered missions too. He had to scrape under the authority of four other cultivators, every single one higher in cultivation than him and each one from a more prestigious family; even that vacuous Beryl, who seemed not to understand how to deal with a simple, polite conversation, had more status than him, simply because he was one of those oh-so-poor Beryls who had been loyal servants of the Emerald family for oh-so-long..
Sometimes, Leo wished that the Beryls had gotten it over with and gone extinct already instead of hanging in that inconvenient limbo, or at least stepped out of the way and let the Aquamarines take their place.Whenever Lyncis was not away from business, which was seldom, Leo could always hear his older brother complaining after the usual weeks of navigating asinine main-family job requirements and the egos of the other branch families.
Every visit to the estate, his complaints ranged from the Beryls, who didn't have the good sense to stay dead, the Heliodors, who always seemed to conveniently 'forget' that the guests they disliked didn't generally enjoy nightshade leaves as seasoning, and the Morganites, who had that complex of being 'wild and free' but still insisted on manners in everyone but them. And now it was his job to navigate those pretentious, pompous, simply idiotic families, each one manifested in a single cultivator.
Each one higher in cultivation than him, and with him expected to deal with them for weeks or possibly months.
All wrapped up in the nice bow of the Emerald's historically poor mission planning.
Leo dropped the paper and unsheathed his sword, cutting it in half mid-air. It did nothing to assuage his anger. At this rate, if the Emerald's strategies didn't kill him, he'd attempt to murder him first and be executed for it before the month was over.
----------------------------------------
Lacerta was quite enjoying her time working under Nash. It was such great practice.
It gave her opportunities to develop her investigative skills and face off against superior opponents, of course. But those weren't the only skills her time on the peculiar task force had sharpened; there was all the politicking of working with the Young Masters of other branch families and, of course, interpreting the orders of the Emerald. As her father had always said, it never hurt to develop a few relationships in the right places, as long as you were detached enough to poison them if you had to.
Her father was like that. Lacerta was too, which had done wonders for distinguishing her among her siblings, though being the eldest likely helped. She had always been the closest to her parents, though it oftentimes was that peculiar Heliodor kind of close that mostly meant you gave them an antidote after you had your fun watching them writhe, and didn't escalate too much after they retaliated.
Of course, there was always the bonus of refining her many poisons. It was somewhat of a tradition for the Heliodors to start with only the basic poisons and to tailor them to their needs; to her delight, the poisons she kept in her leather case (a gift from her parents, the poison and the case both) rapidly grow in both toxicity and sensitivity, to the point she had to be careful to not inhale too much after stabbing something with her applicator.
Yes, things were going just fine to her standards. She hummed contentedly behind the face shield of her hazmat suit as she stirred a powder into a uranium-yellow solution and poured the solution into another flask, where it was distilled into something appreciably more toxic.
Idly, she noted a piece of paper being slipped under the door; she would read it later. The servants had learned not to bother her while they could hear the fume hood working, for their own health if nothing else.
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Lycaon was returning to the consistent thought that all of his 'coworkers' needed a stiff drink and a good vacation, if only because they'd accept it more readily than actual help.
Sometimes, at his most frustrated, he believed that the only place you could find such a diverse collection of neuroses was a psych ward, at least for cultivators of their age; he had heard that older cultivators could get worse, but he wasn't sure if he believed that. Why don't I run through the list real quick? he thought in an attempt to distract himself, rubbing his thumb on the closed envelope. From the seal on it, it had come from the Emerald estate, and the only ordinary reason he would receive a letter from that location had reminded him of the other heirs, and not in an entirely flattering way. One by one. Most stable to least.
Probably the most stable of his colleagues was Lacerta, and that wasn't saying much. She was decently emotionally mature and polite enough, but her weird eyes and fingernails and nigh-manic though well-concealed obsession with poisons still creeped him out.
Then there was Nash. He had daddy issues, but at least he seemed to be trying to do a good job as leader. Lycaon didn't begrudge him for that, but he did begrudge him for his rather questionable decision with Amusement. At least he took some responsibility after; the main family had a bad reputation in that regard, not that the branch families were stupid enough to say that openly.
The second-to-least stable was the Aquamarine; Leo was frustrated, constantly, and it didn't help that he couldn't do anything to release that except for ineffectual attempts to undermine the Emerald's authority, each one of which Nash had responded to and shut down immediately. He was probably the most volatile of the group, though ostensibly the most normal if not the emotionally healthiest. His major issues were just an inferiority complex or two about the Aquamarine's position and his rather slow cultivation; neither were even remotely out of the ordinary when it came to cultivator psychology.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Sorex was the one that worried Lycaon the most.
Identifying the causes of his problems was easy, at least on the surface level; sheer loneliness, attempting to live up to a massive half-fabricated legacy of a dead and idolized family, perhaps a little untreated or undertreated this-or-that did most of the legwork of explaining the root causes of the concerning behavior, thanks to the standard cultivator disdain of therapy in specific and psychology as a whole.
That, however, didn't help Lycaon with predicting those behaviors, and even less for controlling or treating them. It wasn't as if there was some prepackaged solution to the issues of a likely-neglected cultivator child, or at least there hadn't been in the admittedly sparse clinical psychology classes Lycaon had taken. He would have to see whether that held true for the more advanced ones, once he wheedled his parents into allowing him to take them.
Child. That's ridiculous, he caught himself; Lycaon always seemed to catch himself thinking of Sorex as one, despite their rather close cultivations; he wasn’t sure of the Beryl’s actual age, but he seemed to be in his teens at the very least. Absolutely ridiculous. With our matchup, if he put his mind to it, he'd probably be able to kill me with little issue. The distance-managing techniques of the Beryl bloodline, despite it apparently not serving them well enough to keep the majority of them alive, would do wonders against a close-range fighter like Lycaon.
Lycaon wasn't too worried about the violent sort of instability from Sorex. Sorex didn't seem to be able to deal with his emotions or unfamiliar situations well, but channeled it into a sort of spiraling panic or detached bewilderment rather than a defensive irritability like Leo did when he was feeling overwhelmed.
The Morganite thanked his luck for that; he was decently sure that he could restrain Leo if he became a liability, but Sorex would be a more slippery target. The Beryls, while in Lycaon's opinion perhaps over-idolized after their untimely near-extinction, had been the right hand of the Emeralds for centuries for a reason; management of distance was a powerful tool in any combat situation.
Reluctantly, he peeled open the envelope and read the orders. It wouldn't do to delay any longer; he had a job to do, until the Emerald family dismissed him from that duty. Maybe one day he could write his thesis* on the prevalence of mental illness in children of affluent families. This job certainly gave him the observational data for a case study or three.
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The Lord Chief of Police had gone past fear, past anxiety, into sheer, barely contained rage. They were in the same restaurant as before, in the same room as before, with the same people present as before, though the guards had been changed.
Now, though? The atmosphere was completely different.
In the exact same beautifully carved wood chair he had sat in before (Nash could tell, as each one was uniquely made and distinguishable from one another,) the Lord Chief of Police's demeanor was entirely the opposite from before; while before he was practically twitching in his anxiety, reluctantly eating dumplings as the gears in his back clicked and clicked uselessly, now the Lord Chief of Police was only staying seated from politeness.
He had given up on concealing his emotions. His face was twisted in anger, the spines had shot bloodily out of his back and carved a series of channels into the chair, and his skin had reddened as blood rushed through it at pressures and flow rates that would kill a normal human, even a cultivator, carrying heat away from his overheating organs. "You told me," he said, each word coming choppily with an obvious effort to restrain another series of epithets in perfect 4/4 time, "That you could help me with your Father. You said the mission you were on was a simple information-gathering one, and that your information would help me retain my position."
"AND NOW?" he screamed while he stood up, the chair balancing momentarily on the sharp, metallic spines that shot out from his spine before falling backwards, breaking into pieces when it slid off his back and crashed against the polished floor.
Calmly, Nash sat back in his chair and popped a dumpling in his mouth. The guards reached for something in each of their belts, but he held a hand up and stilled them. "I said no such thing," he said, his eyes more focused on the small cup of chilled liquor he poured himself than on the raging Aethero-mechanical man. "I would ask for you to please sit down, but I'm afraid you have removed that option for yourself."
He set the cup on the table and picked up another one, filling it up and sliding it across. It came to a perfect stop just before the edge of the table before Nash had even finished setting the jug of alcohol down. "Have a drink."
His eyes tracked the Police Chief obeying those dry words, tossing back the whole ice-cold cup in a single motion.
"Now that you're a little bit cooled off, I shall explain. I asked for your assistance with the information gathering. You gave me your assistance. I mentioned how much help your cooperation was in the report more than once."
"Oh, really?" A whirring of motors was audible as the Chief of Police leaned over the table, his palms pushing down into the furniture and threatening to snap it. "Then why exactly is your Father not giving me an answer on whether he'll support me for next term?"
"That's heavy. Here," Nash said, pushing the whole jug towards the policeman. "Just have the full thing. I didn't know it was that bad."
"You DIDN'T KNOW?" The words weren't exactly a scream, but rather a whisper-scream; the sort of sentence said with the force and anger of a yell, but said in a low volume that gave it a scratchy, whispering quality.
"No," Nash said, finishing off his own cup.
"Drink up. Maybe it'll help," he said, looking to the side and gesturing to one of his guards, wordlessly asking them to request another jug of alcohol.
Once again, the policeman drank with no regard for propriety or savoring the taste of the liquor, putting the jug to his lips and swallowing glug after glug of the ice-cold alcohol; Nash could see the jug steaming where the condensation met his skin. He set it down with a loud, shifting rattle, residue and whisky stones the only things remaining in the jug. Despite the amount he had imbibed, anger was still the predominant emotion on the policeman's face, but at least now he wasn't shouting; he stayed silent for a moment, his body still processing the sheer amount of alcohol he had imbibed.
Even for a cultivator of his strength, the mass of ethanol and methanol* he had chugged would stun him for a few seconds as he recovered from the burning in his throat. "You didn't know? You said you would help me, and now your father is itching to remove me!" the policeman continued once the feeling had subsided.
His words were curt and biting in that classic time signature he reverted into under stress; it was still progress from straightforward rage. That was a good sign. Hopefully, the booze will mellow him out a bit, Nash thought, reaching his hand out, another jug of alcohol being pressed into his grip immediately afterward.
"My apologies," the Young Master said, his voice as cold as the alcohol he poured for himself. "I was not aware it was my responsibility to manage a man seven times my age in a position much more prestigious than my own, whom occupies a direct position of power over me."
The police chief rankled at that, but it seemed to shut him up; he held out his own cup, and Nash filled it. He drank, and this time it was the slow, elegant sip of a cultivator rather than the stressed shot-taking and chugging only a few moments before.
"Now, given what you've done for me, I believe I held up my end of the bargain," Nash continued, setting the jug down and sipping from his own cup. "I mentioned you to the Patriarch multiple times in a positive light. If you expected me to drop to my hands and knees and beg for you to stay in office, you misunderstood not only our deal but also what the Patriarch would think of such a ploy."
"You should've done something," the policeman said, his teeth grinding. The spines that pierced from his back dripped with blood and lubricant as they retracted and extended with the clicking of gears, a clear indicator of his anxiety.
"Really? Why is that? I do have an idea of something I could do, but it'd be risky to politick without my father's approval so openly, and, if you forgot, I don't have a reason to stick my neck out for you."
The Lord Chief of Police's fingers gripped at the table, elegantly carved wood splintering in his clenching hands. "Why did you accept, then? Just to mock me?"
"Of course not." From the simmering pot on the table, Nash took a dumpling out with his bare fingers and popped it directly in his mouth. He chewed; to the Lord Chief of Police, each gnash of his teeth must have seemed tortuously, ponderously slow. He swallowed, and with a smirk, he spoke.
"You want more from our deal. I have a need of some more police resources. I believe we can come to an agreement."
----------------------------------------
The next day, several online news sources were all coming out with the same story, all of them with slight variations on the exact same headline.
"BREAKING: Young Master of the Emerald Family Speaks Directly, Cites Police Department as Biggest Factor of Rescue," was what the most popular read; something similar was plastered across a dozen other publications, and each one was shared across the various vectors of the internet enough times that most people had read the headline, if not the article.
Less than an hour later, a copy of it came to Senator Emerald's desk. A single eyebrow quirked up at his son's audacity, wondering exactly what concession the Young Master had wrung out of the cyborg.
He would have to ask both personally at some point; for now, the Lord Chief of Police was the more handy of the two.
----------------------------------------
A man wrapped in a cloak of vines and eyes walked into a cave carved into a seaside cliff that loomed out over the deep, dark ocean.
The only way here up was walking, pulling yourself across the near-sheer surface of the cliff by the chains attached to the rock by rusted nails, pounded deep into the wall. That close to the water, you could taste the spray of the sea, smell the fishiness of the ocean and the smoky oiliness of the industrial area that sat just barely off the coast, all tall towers of painted and galvanized steel covered in dew-like droplets of saltwater and squat, cold shacks and warehouses churning out parts and repairing the ships that dared to venture into the water.
Nowadays, Sea Serpents were rare this close to the coast; cultivators skilled in water were paid a small fortune by the city to remain nearby, scaring the smaller ones off and banding up against the larger ones, attacking the massive creatures like hundreds of tiny ants armed with tasers large enough that a backpack was needed to power them. Rare, though wasn't unheard of, and they had a taste for humans, mortal and cultivator alike.
Even a juvenile wouldn't pass up the opportunity for such a vulnerable, lums-rich meal as a cultivator practically hanging off of the cliff face, their hands occupied by the chain and their feet busy scrabbling against the wet, eroded ledge that barely jutted out from the cliff.
Needless to say, it was dangerous. That, however, appeared not to daunt the maybe half-dozen robed and cloaked figures that, one after another, climbed up the cliff with the assistance of the chain and stood silently in the seaside cave.
The first, of course, was Old Man Looking-In, clad in his vines and eyes.
The second to arrive was a man of the water, wrapped in slimy-looking tentacles, the hooked suckers faced outwards; outside, on the cliff face of the climbing path, if one looked closely they would be able to see the scratches the tentacle's grip had carved into the rock.
Third came the woman in the wooden armor. Her protective suit did not look carved, but rather grown around her, and there was no obvious means of entry other than the singular seam in the back. Great branches of wood rose from her helmet like antlers, and she had to stoop to enter the cave.
The fourth and fifth came together, and each one was nearly indistinguishable except for a difference in build. Each one was wrapped in layers and layers of colorful fabric that bulked out their forms, turbans on their heads and layered robes of their bodies. Only their hands and a small slit for their eyes were uncovered; one was tall and broad and the other was merely tall.
The last to enter was the one who had called the meeting.
He was very ordinary. His hair was white and gray, and he was clean-shaven. He wore a thick overcoat and a hat to protect him from the chill and sea-spray, and a pair of glasses were perched on his nose, a chain wrapping around his neck and keeping them from dropping to the ground even if they were to fall from his nose. He walked to the center of the room, as confidently and as spry as a man or cultivator half his age.
There, a table had somehow been placed on the uneven ground, shims of thin-cut wood and old hardcover books shoved under the legs in an effort to make it at least somewhat level. The varnish was beginning to peel in places and the wood showed signs of beginning to rot, but it would be solid for a while yet.
A gavel was sitting on the table and the ordinary-looking man picked it up, tapping it lightly on the table so as to not to damage either.
"And with that, I formally call the twenty-seventh meeting of this august body to commencement."
With that, everyone standing in the room seemed to relax.
The fabric-covered duo pulled some more fabric out of who-knew-where and set it down like sitting mats around the table, while the vines on Old Man Looking-In's robe sloughed off and slithered to the front of the cave, keeping watch and leaving his robe much barer and far less eldritch. The armored woman reached into a bag at her waist and pulled out a small set of six simple beech cups, putting them on the table and tossing them recklessly to the other attendees, each one of whom caught them without issue.
From somewhere within the writhing robe of tentacles, a bottle of wine was pushed to the surface, set carefully on the table by a careful appendage. The man under the robe did not move his arms or legs, simply allowing the squidlike appendages to do the work for him.
"Now," Old Man Looking-In said, leaning over the table to grab the alcohol, "What is this all about, Sworn Brother?"
"Things are moving, Sworn Brother," the ordinary old man said, a contemplative look on his face.
Unimpressed, Rigel tapped on the cork of the wine bottle, a small vine growing into it and allowing him to pull it out. He began pouring into each glass pushed towards him, not looking up while he spoke.
"Oh, don't get on that. You can get away with that in front of your disciples, but everyone here knows you don't have a bone of gravitas in your body - wasn't it you that had us drag this ridiculous table here?" With a good natured smile, Old Man Looking-In continued. "We had to disassemble the blasted thing to get it to fit in the cave, and you hadn't thought to mention that until we were halfway up, still clinging onto it and the chain with one hand each."
In mock indignation, the old man drew back, a hand dramatically posed over his heart, as if wounded. The impression was ruined, or perhaps enhanced, by the cup of booze in that hand. "You dare! I, your Senior and Sworn Brother, call you here and you do not believe in the importance of my words? The disrespect!"
Chuckles traveled through the room, but went silent soon after. Whatever conversations had begun between those present had been snuffed out by the leader's expression, which had fallen into a contemplative sadness as soon as his joke had finished.
"That bad?"
Those words were said by the tall and skinny one of the fabric-wrapped twins. The words were muted, not by the many layers of fabric wrapped around their mouth, but rather their quiet, almost regretful nature, the words fighting to be heard over the everpresent ambience of crashing waves.
"Worse," the leader said, shakily. "The Temple has returned - in Wolf Nation alone, there's been sightings of two, maybe three simulacra."
"How old? What archetypes?" the armored woman asked, her helmet split apart and laid on the table in order to allow her to drink from the cup she had brought. Her eyes were hard and focused, her gaze as sharp as a straight razor and her body tense.
"Around three years. I'm unsure of exactly what base emotions, but we know their pursuits; there's a smith in the Capital City, an alchemist who has been spotted in the settled areas near the Mountains of Howling Wind, and some sort of mushroom creature, again in the Capital City. The first and the last may be related somehow, but they're antagonistic, so the last one may not be a simulacrum."
"Troubling." Old Man Looking-In finished pouring the last cup, his own, and put down the bottle.
Gesturing with the cup, he adjusted his seating position on the mat. "I may be able to get some more information on the one in the Capital; for a while, I was considering someone involved with the incident as another disciple, that Young Master of the Emeralds, and he may have enough gratitude to answer a few questions."
"Oh?" the armored woman said, one eyebrow raised up in interest. "How exactly did a highborn of a family like the Emeralds get involved with the Temple? Don't they have enough sense to avoid the Temple at any cost?"
A rumbling voice came out of the tall, broad fabric-wrapped twin. "Callin' us senseless?" he asked, dryly but in good humor.
That brought a grin to the leader's face. "Have to be senseless, for work like this. Look at us; half-dead of old age and out here in a cold, wet, salty cave, plotting against Body Destruction cultivators. And the strongest of us is, what, Third Calcification?"
"Actually," the tentacled man interrupted, the oceanic limbs flexing and coiling around each other, "I reached the Fourth a few years ago. Unfortunately, I damaged something along the way; I fear I harmed my foundation."
The wood-armored one rose up her cup. "A toast to that breakthrough!"
They leaned in and tapped the cups together; as they were made of wood, it was more of a dull thunk than a clink in toast, but it got the point across anyway. They all shouted a toast, except for the tentacled one, whose own voice was more of a mumble. Soon, the cups were all empty and hurriedly pushed back to Old Man Looking-In with a tentacle or articulate length of fabric or a gauntleted hand or simply slid over, and he began to fill them all back up.
While he was still filling up the leader's cup, Old Man Looking-In gave a knowing smile.
"Well, if we toast like that to every advancement, I'm afraid we'll run out of wine rather quickly. Just three years ago, I advanced to the Third Calcification, and ever since I've been working to get to the Middle of that realm."
Another cheer resounded through the room, and Old Man Looking-In smiled politely through all of it.
"Still hasn't done anything for these white hairs of mine. That isn't what makes me feel old, though; I met with my disciple here in Grand Harbor just a few days ago, and he's almost caught up to me!"
The armored woman cackled at that, a throaty laugh only staunched by her taking a drink. "You didn't even tell us one of your disciples lived here, and now you're telling us they're almost better than you! Which one is it?" She finished her cup and slammed it down on the table, barely controlled enough to not damage it. "I can never keep them straight; do you keep adoption papers* in your back pocket or something? You even tried to snag a noble's son! Shameless!"
Rigel sighed. "No. Couldn't fit the booze. Nearly got the Emerald, though; he stayed at my academy for a while, teaching classes for room and board. Ran away from his Father; I can't say I blame him, from what I've heard of the Senator."
There was some more chatter, most of it ribbing, but eventually it died down as the leader held a hand up. "So, Eyes. You said you may have a way to contact your attempted disciple and get more information on the smith simulacrum?"
"Yes," Old Man Looking-In replied. "I shall get right at that. Should I offer any information in exchange?"
The leader considered that for a moment. "Yes, but don't imply there's a group," he said, hesitantly. "We don't know how many families are compromised, and we don't know what signs to look for so early in a splitting-off event."
"Very well. The Emeralds should be safe, at least for now," the old man said, closing one of his eyes and calling to an eyevine still in the Capital City. "They certainly seem aware of the Hidden Mountain Temple, but it seems an adversarial relationship;I shall ask about that too."
"Be careful what questions you ask. That you ask them at all shows our knowledge. Now that that is over, does anyone else have new information on the Temple's activities?"
"Not as of recent," the tall-skinny fabric one said, and nobody moved to correct them.
"Well, then. Might as well catch up!"
----------------------------------------
All the way in the Capital City, Nash felt something in his pocket vibrate. Curiously, he took out the small box that had caused the disturbance; it was the package Old Man Looking-In had given him when he first escaped from Beryl, and he never understood what it was for.
He had carried it anyway, more as a keepsake than anything given the small size and apparent lack of function. Now, though, it was beginning to pry open. Like a chick breaking out of an egg, a minuscule eye-vine only as long as Nash's middle finger and with an eye only as large as his fingernail emerged and looked at him. Nash looked into the Aether around him. The guards were outside of his door, and the only channel-bearing creature or object other than him in the room was the small vine.
Satisfied, he looked back at the vine, still worming its way out of the box. "Yes?" he said, making sure to enunciate his words clearly; he never did figure out whether the creepy little buggers could hear or not.
The eye looked around in the room, rearing back on the vinestalk like a snake about to strike until it settled on Nash's desk. It pointed to it, and Nash obliged, placing it on the table. Slithering onto the desk, the vine thumped in a pattern.
Letter by letter, a word formed; "W R I T E," the eye said. Gathering a pen and an empty piece of paper, Nash placed each on the table and stepped back, crossing his arms politely and waiting. The eye looked at the pen, larger than its entire body. Then, it looked at Nash, then back at the pen.
"Too big?"
The eyevine made a motion that he took as an answer in the affirmative. "D I P," it thumped out.
"Oh. Be quiet." Nash pushed at the button integrated into his desk, activating the microphone. "I require some liquid ink that a brush can be dipped into. Quality is not an issue."
He stopped depressing the button and sat down in the chair, pushing everything but the blank piece of paper and the extension Old Man Looking-In away. "Whatever you have to say must be rather important if you needed to contact me this way - I wasn't even aware you could."
"T E M P L E" it thumped out.
"Wait a second - the ink will take a while to come in, but I can at least draw something you can select from, or something."
Picking up the pen, unfortunately overlarge for the eye but exactly the right size for him, he scrawled down a rough alphabet in a single line, close enough together that the vine could point at them. Their discussion from there was rather more productive, though that productivity was soon surpassed when the ink arrived with no questions or fuss, the small pearl tray and crystal-glass bottle of quality ink gliding across the paper with all the skill that Old Man Looking-In brought to his calligraphy, even through such an inadequate tool as the end of a vine.
The conversation boiled down into a simple agreement and the fulfillment of it. First, the old man established that he knew of the Temple, possibly more than Nash himself, and proposed an exchange of information, to which they agreed. Nash, of course, didn't play all of his cards and could tell that Rigel hadn't either; neither begrudged the other for that.
It was the simple nature of doing business.
The information Nash gave Old Man Looking-In was simple, surface-level; how Amusement acted, how Nash had gotten involved though not why, and how strong Amusement was and how he fought. He was quite curious about why Old Man Looking-In asked those questions specifically, but knew it was not his place to pry, though he did feel obliged to give a warning. What Nash got in exchange was mostly either confirmation of what he suspected or incredibly worrying; for one, Amusement likely wasn't the only one, and there was probably something more to the fungus the doctors had detected in his body.
The most important thing he learned, though?
Simulacra like Amusement seemed to have an expiration date.
It wasn't a short one by any measure. Even to a cultivator, two hundred years was a tall order to wait out, but it was something. It was a weakness - it showed that the Hidden Mountain Temple, for all their strength, were still imperfect, not entirely ascended to a world beyond all other cultivators. They had the very tips of their toes in the muck, at least.
But when someone had a weakness? Hopefully, that meant they had another. That was what he would need to cling to; it wasn't as if Amusement would stop wreaking havoc within Nash's lifetime, so he needed to have a plan to deal with that pondscum of a 'human' being. He would need to tell his Father, preferably without alerting him to the source of the information. That was perhaps a taller order than waiting the two hundred years; if the Patriarch had a reason to believe he was hiding something, or knew that the old man had such information...
Nash already felt the headache coming on.