Only two months into his rotation and already he misses his home. His job is supposed to be corralling spirit beasts away from the sect. Simple, easy, and pays quite well. His family is on the richer side exactly because he is here, standing guard like a glorified scarecrow. It is not supposed to involve bandits, and indeed in the five decades he’s worked this job there hasn’t been a single one. Apparently the Rakkaja took offense to that. Now he has to deal with the odd bandit group or so, and stop pretentious brats from getting themselves killed. It helps that he’s in foundation, only took him three decades, but the respect he’s earned and the physic he sports is enough to resolve most issues.
But not that first raid.
That first raid was disastrous, every bandit was in purification, so many died and he was almost one of their number.The servants all live on the periphery of a clearing next to the mountain (creatively called Fang mountain) the sect calls home, meaning they took the brunt of the blow. A hundred and two, that’s how many died of the servants number, the sect never announced it, nor did they earn a place on their fancy little memorial stones, but that’s only to be expected. Cultivators don’t care for mortals, that’s just a fact of life. Although when the horns sounded he did expect some inner disciples to come down from the mountain, if only to protect the young ones. But apparently cultivators don’t care much for each other either.
He thinks that’s a pretty sad way to live.
But it’s their choice at the end of the day, who is he to tell someone that could kill him barehanded how to live their life?
He feels bad for the kids though, he can see the friendships that’ll likely break given time. But surely not all of them are so consumed by the desire for immortality that they’d forget the world around them? He can only hope. It would be a sad journey to travel alone.
Ankar’s thoughts are interrupted by the twang of a bowstring.
-
The horn,
That’s the second time in as many months that he’s heard it. He walks away from the field, leaving his braids to trail the ground as children scramble home to grab their weapons. He looks on out into the distance to see the oncoming assault.
Hmmmm,
That’s quite a few.
He might actually have to try.
-
She runs, as fast as her legs can take her. She’s carrying a babe in her arms, she won’t let them take him. Not after they took her husband, she doesn’t care if it’s against sect rules to climb the mountain, but it is what she’ll do to guarantee the survival of her child.
Even if punishment might lead to her death.
She has to keep him alive.
-
“Ohhhh, a swing and a miss,” he says to the man with a truly mangled arm, “You really need to work on your aim good man, it’s fucking embarrasing, honestly.”
The bandit grunts and charges him once more, howling a war cry as Rakan crushes his skull with a metal club the size of a person. Brain matter and gore splatter to the floor, and some of it on his robes.
Gross.
Rakan shoulders his club and grunts as an arrow bounces off his skull. Fucking annoying little things, he has a few sticking out of his torso and back, not being far enough along to where his flesh would be closer to stone. His bones though? Yeah, that’s not going to work, although he’s heard horrifying things about the new black powder contraptions, so who knows. Maybe there will come a day where mortal matches cultivator. Likely not but it’s an entertaining thought.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Whose next?” he muses as he leisurely walks forward to the cowards making a shield wall around the archers. All the brave ones are dead, which means there’s no more fun to be had, ah well, he’ll make due with slaughtering a few fools.
Just as he goes to raise his club, he feels something.
A Qi signature, so subtle he almost missed it, but overwhelming in its density. He snaps his head to the side just fast enough to dodge a blade, it is a normal blade, but just a second before it would have struck him it is filled with liquid Qi and he can feel the air shift as something like an explosion follows it’s passing.
“Good!” Smiles a woman with teeth like a predator, “good, good, good. You’ve been having quite the time with my men boy, hmmmm? A little rude don’t you think? being so close to anchoring as you are. Perhaps the tiger should teach the cat some manners.”
Rakan stabilises himself and takes a step back, club placed between them so as to provide some measure of protection.
“Forgive this one, honourable bandit. But this one has seen proper tigers, and you only qualify as an anorexic.”
The woman laughs and it is the promise of the hunt, the growling of the belly, and the tearing of flesh all at once, “Brave, so brave. I might keep you alive. To have my own fun, how do you scream I wonder?”
Rakan goes to says something but in an instant she is gone, he covers his club to his back and infuses it with Qi so that it doesn’t break. She cuts through half of it and pulls away, appearing in front of him, he barely dodges a slash to his midsection by jumping out of range.
And this is his first mistake.
Never jump in a fight, especially when your opponent is faster than you.
A hand grips his throat and smashes him into the ground, cratering the earth beneath him.
He is let go and left to his coughing fit as he rolls over and rises to his hands and knees.
“C’mon” says the woman as she squats next to him, “you can do better than that. Entertain me little disciple, i’m much more fun when i’m having fun. Besides, the longer you stall me, the more time you give to the munchkins.”
Rakan grits his teeth and gets back up, swinging his club at the woman as she backs away with a titter. “That’s the spirit little cultivator, get up and fight! Face something you possibly can’t beat with grit and determination! Fight and fight and fight, until your bones are ground to dust and your flesh is pulped to meat.”
Rakan huffs out a laugh, “you have an oddly cultivator like spirit for a lady in leather.”
She shrugs, “what can I say, the philosophy is attractive. All that violence and suffering, compounded into eternity? What’s not to love?”
“I get it, you're a sadistic cunt, can we get back to fighting now?” Rakan says.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, was his second mistake.
-
Cultivation doesn’t really have steps, any of the paths could be taken at any time, they're simply organized into both practicality and feasibility. Theoretically a person could anchor their soul without having cleansed any of their meridians, your willpower would just need to surpass the gods themselves. Every single one of Mara’s meridians are cleansed, from major to minor. Yet she can’t anchor, it’s right there, but she always falls short. It’s why she left the Rusted Silver sect, thinking that a proper journey might give her the insight or strength to complete what she so deserves. She never thought she would end up in league with bandits.
But she doesn’t really have much regrets, as she cuts through the servants of a truly pathetic sect. She can feel herself getting closer, with every attempt she understands why exactly she wasn’t capable before. She was too soft, too sentimental for the walking bags of flesh that are mortals. She’s working on correcting that as her blade bisects a man trying to hold her back from reaching his daughter.
The girl scrambles and cries, saying something incomprehensible, perhaps accusations, perhaps pleas. It doesn’t really matter.
She brings her blade up.
She brings her blade down.
A clang echoes throughout the alley as a cutlass appears directly in the path of her blade. Mara finds a child with two voids for eyes staring up at her with a fury that makes Mara kind of confused. Beside her is a girl, who is perhaps in her mid-teens, holding onto the void child's shoulder.
“Run,” The teen girl says to the child. The child cries out her thanks and runs away.
Mara lets the girl scramble away, she is of no consequence after all. She stares at the two who got in her way instead.
“How did you do that?” She asks, amazed.
“None of your concern”, says the teen girl as they both disappear.