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Chapter 1

“3…2…1…Lift!”

Straining to carry the load of fruit, I glare at Brother across the top of the basket.

“Easy money, you said. Twenty coppers for a single trip, you said. So why are we lifting this stupid thing halfway across the village?”

Despite the effort, Brother cracks a grin at me. “Come on Yang, stop being a baby. It’s not THAT far.”

“And the girls say you’re not THAT ugly, but that doesn’t mean you’re not. Ugly, that is.”

I say that, but Brother really is quite good-looking. Square jaw, strong chin, tall and broad shouldered; if the rumours are true he’s quite sought after in the village.

“You do know we look alike, so really, you’re insulting yourself here.”

I wish that were true. While our features are somewhat similar, my jaw is sharper, my build skinnier, my nose larger, and he towers over me by half a head.

Whatever, it’s not height that matters, but length.

It’s half an hour later that we deposit the basket at the door of the merchant, who smiles and chats with Brother, while I stand awkwardly to the side and stare at my feet to avoid any eye contact.

Since we were children, it’s always just been the two of us. Mother and Father died when I was too young to remember, leaving me in the care of Brother. Now we work as the village help, taking odd jobs whenever possible to scrape by a living.

It’s not much, but it’s honest work.

“Well, well, well. If it isn’t the little baby sheep.” I groan inwardly as I hear the voice, looking up to see three youths striding towards me. Sorry, did I say stride? ‘Strut’ would be a better word, with their chests jutting out like peacocks. Well, calling Hai and his cronies peacocks may be too insulting towards peacocks.

Besides, what’s so wrong about being a sheep anyway? They could at least have come up with a better insult. Sheep can be pretty cute, can’t they? Although I’d really rather not have Hai calling me cute. Oh Heavens, I need that image out of my head now.

Seeing my lack of an answer as permission to continue their abuse, Hai pokes me in my chest with a pudgy finger, enough to send me stumbling slightly. The son of a relatively well-off merchant, Hai took it to mean he could tread on (figuratively, but sometimes literally) the other kids in the village and rely on his rich dad to smooth things over when things got rough, usually involving a lot of thinly veiled threats and not-so-thinly veiled threats, depending on how well-off said kids were. Most of the time, he got his way.

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“Hey! Leave my brother alone!”

Muahahaha. ‘Most’ of the time, but luckily Brother Dearest is big enough to discourage even Hai from messing with him. With a sneer, he turns around and leaves, Brother glaring daggers into his back.

‘You do have to learn to take care of yourself, you know. I’m not always going to be able to protect you.”

I glance up at him, the bulky pack on my back and the narrow path making it difficult to do much else. Our last job for each day is carrying groceries up the mountain to Old Fu, one of our most loyal (and also one of our most grumpy) customers.

“I do, but how? It’s not like I could beat all three of them in a fight together, and even if I did, I’d have to deal with Hai’s father.”

“Maybe Old Fu can teach you how to fight. I heard he was a soldier in the Army back in the day.” Truly, he must be desperate, for him to suggest me taking that old man as a mentor.

“That old man won’t even say thanks for his groceries. What makes you think he’ll teach me how to fight?”

Brother sighs as he gazes off into the distance. The mountain track we’re on is one of my favourite places in the region, a little bubble of calm and quiet tucked away from the village. The setting sun provides a reddish glow to the Three Fangs, three peaks marking the village border and casting their shadow on the thatch huts below. A small group of opulent manors sit near the edge of the village, the property of the village elite, merchants who wanted big houses but decided that land in the capital was too expensive and decided to take a more ‘hands-on’ approach to ‘ensuring the quality of their wares’. Somewhere in one of those, Hai is undoubtedly stuffing his face with some rare beastie. While we climb up a mountain to deliver food to a cranky old man.

Life can be so unfair sometimes.

As we slam our baskets at the foot of the cabin, Old Fu comes out to make payment to Brother. He looks old enough to be our great-grandfather, with a face creased with wrinkles and browned by the sun, a drooping white moustache hanging from his upper lip that was probably fashionable in his youth but now reminds me of a catfish. Even so, his back is straight and his movements graceful enough to give me pause when judging his age. A master of communication, several grunts and a nod are enough to convey to us the message:

“Good job, same time tomorrow.”

Or at least I hope that’s what it means. I’d rather not make the climb tomorrow and find out he meant to tell us to stop the deliveries.

Settling back in our little hut with a series of groans, we settle into our meditative positions. Our last ritual of every day, strengthening our Cores and forging the reisen within into pathways throughout our body. With this, our Cores grew larger, our reisen purer. Sufficiently developed Cores were what allowed Imperial Warriors to fight the way they did, and reaching certain levels were said to give the person immortality.

Not that it really applied to us, however. Our lack of elixirs and resources made developing our Cores a slow and arduous task. But even then, our meagre pools still helped strengthen us slightly, increasing our strength and stamina and stopping us from falling sick so easily.

It wasn’t an easy life, but it was simple. I would give everything to have it back again.