Conclaed

The carriage zooms overhead like a nimbus, slowing as it turns downward carving through the sky to land softly exactly where the carpet starts. I have a number of the boys decked out in their new robes looking all official to welcome the guests from my contact in the sects. The one standing between me and any other strong cultivator taking everything I’ve so far accomplished for themselves.

"Honoured guests, welcome!’’ I say with outstretched arms as the Harmony Ring Constellation Sect members step out of their flying carriage onto the velvety black carpel sprawls below their feet. I grin as the elder pauses, his daintily clad feet feeling the soft detail of every bristle of the luxury rug I’m sure.

‘’I hope the trip was auspicious,’’ signalling Yaga forward from the gathered procession.

‘’Sect elder, this is lowly one is Yaga to see to all your needs on this visit.’’ He lowers his head respectfully but the other idiots are snickering like the idiots they are behind their hands.

I glare and they shut it quick but the senior-looking of the two guests is displeased. Fuck, I’m surrounded by short sighted idiots. The tiny ruby in my ring fleshes as I pass chi through it closing on my guests. True Element cultivator, strong but not overwhelmingly so, from the other I get nothing.

I have the boys decked out in matching sacred robes, each an expensive defensive treasure capable of stopping a Stage 8 Initial Element chi blast before crumbling. Idiots will stay idiots though.

‘’Come, let me lead you through a tour of our abode,’’ I say gesturing forward.

The two men say nothing, the senior nodding and moving forward with the tall one a step behind deferentially.

*

‘’I’m not sure whether you’re a complete idiot or only half one,’’

‘’A guest should always mind its manners in my house,’’ I bristle reflexively before getting a hold of myself. No, I cannot show my power here nor afford to make an enemy of the Sects. The silent tall one by the door doesn’t even budge as I retract the oozing darkness back into myself. I have no idea how strong that one is but I don’t like the look of him if he wasn’t wearing clothes I’d swear he was a Bantu-jin.

‘’Are you done with your tantrum?’’ The elder asks with a bored expression, [dong], he taps his staff on the floor.

‘’You do not build a Sect with wealth alone,’’ [dong].

‘’You do not buy sacred robes, elixirs and cultivation manuals thinking a gang of roughians will become a Sect,’’ [dong].

‘’A Sect is built around an ideal, a path, a person, a clan but always the is something tying Sects together more than pulling them apart. Any one of these... ‘friends’ of yours could be bribed, threatened or simply convinced to turn against you and you’ll always know that. Had this been a sect they'd depend upon it for their food, shelter, growth, life. The lives of their grandparents, parents, sons and daughters.

‘’To go against the sect would be to go against all they know. All their friends would be sect, family, associates even some of their worst enemies. Each would know nothing but sect such that to betray the sect is to betray themselves. each would know exactly where they fit in the hierarchy, they’d know their place whatever it may be, each would belong. As all higher being crave.

‘’This thing you are compiling here?’’ he waves his crooked staff around the opulence I have amassed since the Lords of Fortune favoured me.

‘’Whatever it is it cannot last nor will it ever become a sect thus I cannot sanction any further foolishness with the senior's name." He pauses starring me, but he hasn't said anything I haven't already realised by now so I keep my mouth shut.

‘’Good, now your lacking intelligence notwithstanding you have managed to provide benefits for Senior Silent Resolve. I suspect your influx of pure ingredients and wealth is from access to one of the rumoured portals to a dungeon world, yes? Regardless that will have to stop as well, the Bantu are moving claiming all such portal sites for themselves so step back from that, immediately.’’

Darkness seeps out of me again, I could kill this old fuck right now. Within this room is a dampening array that will lock up anyone at Chi Transformation Continent or below, bind him, blind him, cross the distance unleashing an Unholy Orb within a heartbeat and he’s dead or severely reprimanded. He dares come to my stronghold and speak to me like this!

[Dong], the sound shakes me apart as I’m about to activate the array. Disembodied, I lose connection to my abilities, disoriented, helpless. Completely neutralized, I slam back into myself, not even a moment has passed. The message is clear though, ‘do what I say or I will end you’.

‘’You can keep whatever spoils you have, with the wise Senior getting another batch of specimen for the trouble of sending me to advise and assess. Preferably alive if you can manage that,’’ he waves his hand dismissively after a single step by the servant shaking in terror spilling wine from the jug.

It saw me humiliated and for that it will have to die and it knows it.

‘’Whatever else this becomes it will not be a sect, I’d advise you cannibalise all this for your own advancement before someone less scrupulous than I comes and takes it all from you. Should you refuse to heed my words the Senior will cut ties with you and any connection that might lead to him,’’ there is a pause as the man points his now terrifying staff at me.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

[Dong], the sound resounds as he again taps it onto the stone floor.

‘’This here is Zero Six Six,’’ he gestures to the man casually leaning back against the wall hardly moving this whole time. ‘’You will assist him in any way he requires and be thankful for the opportunity to be of use.’’

With those words, the man stands, nods at the stranger and stalks out the doors the servant scrambles to open just in time.

...

Compose yourself damnit.

I study the stranger, lean wily physique, black hair brown eyes, an array bracelet worn openly on his left wrist. That must cost a fortune, calling more attention to him than is necessary, he must be strong, or stupid. Rust-red jacket worn over defensive sacred robes, boots not sandals, this is no sect member.

‘’Zero Six Six is it?’’ I take the initiative, this is my house after all.

He nods slowly, walks over to sit on the couch the sect elder just vacated.

‘’And you are Conlaed, the bandit turned merchant with aspiration of establishing a sect.’’

Insolent, but I can’t afford to alienate the Harmony Sect. ‘’An unusual name amongst these parts, from where do you hail?’’

‘’The less you know about me the better for everyone involved,’’ he says taking a morsel of the fair the sect elder hadn’t even touched.

I can’t read him, can’t sense any chi from him. A technique, an item?

‘’What can I do for you guest Zero Six Six?’’ I have to step carefully here.

He eats slowly, his gaze falling on me with hidden mirth. ‘’You will smuggle me through your portal into the dungeon world,’’ he says with a sly grin. ‘’And please, call me Zero.’’

*

Ori

We are hopelessly outmatched facing the 100 Sages of Pandora in our numbers, thousands of us facing off against the coven of otherworldly warlocks, just 100 of them alone. We are pushing and dying because we have no other options but to choose the mode of our death. We push forward in a hopeless onslaught and the humanoid creatures that have acquired a level of power that make our best mages and Awakened warriors as babes fighting adults swat our numbers aside as meaningless.

The Sages sling spells and bolts of lightning with quakes, frost and storms in an almost single continuous deluge as they move forward sweeping through our ranks of 20 000 warriors with the outmost of ease. We throw ourselves at them bodily and helplessly expecting to die but at least we are getting closer. Maybe the 19th thousand of us will have reached their feet and will just smother them into submission.

We rush forward warriors blown apart, frozen solid, petrified into crumbling statues. But there is no other choice for us, the food supplies have gone dry long ago, we have not seen the sun in what feel like years with this blackness hovering above us poisoning the sky. Our families are in the city behind us, Cyphris, our last stand and a position from which we cannot retreat.

I throw myself forward expecting death like the rest of my comrades and all the rest of my countrymen but I find that I've made it a 100m without being scorched to death. Surely I will die soon but I run ahead anyways for behind it is death by starvation and famine that awaits me.

The city a defensive stronghold that has filled to the brim with non-combatants fleeing the Sages filling the land with darkness as they progress. Nothing is left whole in their wake; the people, the beasts the very land reforming into mutated caricatures of its former self. Nothing is left whole in their wake. I will die fighting, not turned into a diseased thing or quivering in fear until I starve like those still in the city.

I roar out my challenge hoping to hear answering calls from those running behind me but all I hear is the silence of war, the silence of slaughter, death and mage-fire arching through the dark mists. I am alone and I don't know what to do but charge ahead to where I expect to find my death and meet it with quivering determined trepidation. Why me oh spirits of the heavens beyond, why do I have to be the one to suffer most? To stay alive longest-running to my own death, experiencing the tragedy and futility of my own defiance longer than necessary?

Our nation has one of the oldest histories in all the nations of Azania. We had the largest number of Awakened warriors in the known world and we prided ourselves in the surety that only fools would attack us, fools or madmen. Our army is the largest single concentration of Awakened Warriors in all of known Gaia.

But we took quantity over quality it seems, a fatal mistake now that we reap the fruits of our labour. Now here we are, the largest army of Awakened and we are nothing but fodder thrown to slow the advance of true powers as the Generals think of ways to save themselves from annihilation.

I see a target I should never have been able to get this close to in the first place and throw my spear without a moment’s hesitation. This is it, this is the moment I die, and the crackling of spells, the white bleached world, the sizzling of power is all that pervades my sense as I expect the Sage to turn and smite me at any moment. But my spear flies true and somehow manages to punch a hole in the back of the being out through its chest before my honing aura fails and sputters out.

I am completely bewildered and in open-mouthed awe but I run past the now clearly dead Sage in complete confusion as I rush headlong towards the next source of all these sparkles and bright lights, cackling electric sounds and dark winds whistle harshly. I unsheathe my sword in a single smooth motion depicting my skill, for though I am a lazy drunkard I am still an Awakened Soldier of the Southern Kush, I know my blade work well. It was my bread and butter training for my Awakening ceremony.

I reach the closest Sage and duck under a few random flying rocks to get within the thing’s guard and cut with deadly precision. My blade is honed and swung with everything I have into the neck of the beaked creature.

It’s head parts like wool being sheared by my blade, all the rocks and floating debris falling on the ground quite suddenly. Another turns and looks right past me and I move quickly forward without even hesitating to wonder why it can’t see me.

I stab into it's chest with a heavy blow, putting everything I have wrecking into it's breast and out its back like I'm stabbing a wooden door.

They start hissing at each other and I've killed three now. I am flushed with energy and determination, something of killing them giving me vigour. I've killed three of the unkillable beings of the world beyond the Gates.

I rush towards the fourth but they know of my presence now, they know I'm amongst them and there are debris and rocks and cyclones floating around everywhere as if searching for me. I duck and dodge what I can but I can no longer get any closer without wrecking myself against the flying debris. But hope against all hope I notice them retreating slowly instead of the ever-constant forward they are known for.

They have killed us in our thousands these past several ten-day, they’ve killed hundreds of thousands since the Darkening and we've been giving ground as little as possible, we kill only three and they retreat? I doesn't make sense until I do the math, I've just killed off 3% of their forces in a single day of fighting, a superior foe. For them three people is a huge loss at a rate they can’t afford.

I feel hands on me, human hands that belong to people that are shouting in celebration. I'm being lifted bodily off the ground and exalted before the army, men that knew they were dead without a doubt are looking at me with new hope in their eyes. I look on in momentary confusion, and suddenly there is a weight of responsibility crushing me in response to that hope in their eyes.

What do I do now?