Lines of soft blue pulsed across Nadia in waves. They moved as a single entity toward her hand, highlighting lines of circuitry from cybernetics underneath her skin. Each pulse grew stronger and faster than the one before until James couldn’t see a difference between pulses.

“Master, what are you doing?” James asked, his voice almost cracking with panic.

“Leaving you with a fighting chance,” Nadia said firmly.

She looked down at her chest, James following the motion. A small orb was forming over where Nadia’s heart lay, growing in size as the light entered it. James saw ocean waves on the inside, crashing against the edge like a beast in a cage.

It seemed as if the entire world was trying to squeeze itself into the small orb forming between Nadia’s hands. The blue intensified, changing from soft skies to the roiling dark of the deeps. For a moment, the orb became a blue so dark it looked black. It continued to rage against the edges of its confinement, Nadia’s face growing pained.

“Master!” James called out.

Nadia concentrated harder, pushing herself even in her damaged state. The blackness in the core swirled, mixing with an injection of soft white. The circuitry under Nadia’s skin shone bright as they channeled their essence into the core. The swirling dark blue and white mixed melding into a clear, lake-like blue that looked like the lakes on her floor in Blue Mountain Sect.

With a grunt, Nadia pushed against the core once more, solidifying the orb between her heart and hands. The effort hadn’t left her unscathed, however. The circuitry that glowed under Nadia’s skin had come to the surface. The ravines of electronics cut through her arms, crisscrossing with the fractaling electrical damage on her skin. Her body looked gaunt, as if drained of energy.

She sighed, leaning back against James’s arm. Weakly, she turned to him.

“I leave you my core, James,” she said.

Tears fell from James. “Master, why?”

James leaned forward as her voice became weaker, the wind from the train almost drowning out her words. “Because, despite everything that has happened, disciple, I do not regret teaching you. You have made mistakes, acted thoughtlessly, but I have never not been proud of how hard you worked. And I will not let my failures be the death of you.”

James pulled his teacher into a hug, tears flowing from him. “I’m sorry I wasn’t stronger, Master.”

“You were strong enough, disciple,” Nadia said. She shifted, grabbing the core cupped between her hand and heart. She pulled it softly from her person and wrapped her hand around James’s back.

“It was my weakness, and blindness that brought us here,” she whispered. “Do not blame yourself.”

James sobbed.

Nadia leaned forward, her forehead resting on James’s shoulder for reassurance since she couldn’t move her other arm. The light was swiftly fading from her eyes but even then she comforted James.

“Live a good life, disciple,” she said quietly.

Then, with the last of her strength, she pushed the newly formed core into James’s lower back before slumping lifelessly into his arms.

James had no words, only tears. Shimmering green jungle flew by him, completely ignored by the mourning man. The sun shone high in the sky, James missing his first sight of the celestial orb as he gripped his master tighter.

But the longer James mourned, the longer he ignored Nadia’s last gift. And cores were not something a cultivator ignores. When Nadia socketed her created node, it started a process in James’s body, linking him with the world inside. James pushed against the connection through sheer grief, but eventually the core broke through.

The cultivator’s back grew hot as the core linked into James’s node. The heat ran up his back, striking each node before it reached James’s head. A scalding feeling pierced through the haze of grief, causing James to recoil back and grab his head.

“Aaaaugh!” he shouted.

It felt like every headache James had in his life combined into one entity and shoved itself into his head. There were ten thousand icy, burning needles stabbing into him. A moon hung in the sky, pulling the waves of pain back and forth across his brain.

He fell onto the ground, the cool metal floor doing little to relieve him. He jerked, curling up as the pain continued to assault him. James lost himself in the pain.

He heard voices, Tsukiko, Nadia, Peregrine. They spoke to him in unintelligible gibberish, but he still interpreted their meaning. He had failed them and now they were lost forever.

James’s sobs became choking gasps as panic gripped his heart. The waves of pain soon moved in time to his heartbeat, spiking across his body. The voices grew stronger with each beat, almost drowning James in their accusations.

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He didn’t know how long he stayed there, wracked with pain and guilt, but a quiet voice eventually spoke to him.

“Remember to meditate, disciple,” Nadia’s soft voice whispered. “Look inside yourself.”

“Master?” James called out in a haze.

The soft voice faded, but it was enough to give James a goal. Despite the pain, he twisted himself upright, settling into the lotus position that his Master taught him at the beginning. He took a breath, imagining his lungs absorbing the pain and expelling it out in counts of four.

He fell into a trance, the pain becoming a dull drumming in the back of his head as he remembered Nadia’s teachings. And in that trance, he fell into blackness.

__

Nadia Archimedes, sixty-seventh daughter of the current patriarch, first learned of injustice at twelve years old. She had been playing with a friend, the son of some cultivator of little political importance whose precociousness overruled his senses. On a day like any other, the young boy got it into his head to play a game of dares. Nadia, another child with more precociousness than sense, agreed to the game with a smirk.

The dares started small. Simple tasks like climb trees or walls. They quickly escalated, becoming tests of skill and finesse that only the children of cultivators could complete. The boy dared her to climb houses and sneak past servants to grab a book from her father’s archives. In turn, she dared him to steal a talisman from her mother’s pavilion.

She had succeeded. He did not.

Her mother—if Nadia could even call someone who left raising to servants a mother—had been in her room when the boy had made a mistake and fallen through the roof to land on her bed. Her mother had assumed an assassin, only calming down when guards in the halls outside had placed the boy in so many chains he could stand in a thunderstorm and laugh at the lightning. Her father had come swiftly after. Any attack on one of his concubines meant an attack on him.

Under the gaze of so many adults, the boy broke down and admitted to their game of dares. Nadia had been called in and questioned. She admitted to what she’d done, because even then she believed in the morality of cultivation.

Her father let her off with a warning. The boy, her friend, had his hands cut off for ‘attempting to steal.’ Even when Nadia said it was her fault, that her friend wouldn’t have tried to steal if she hadn’t dared him, her father didn’t relent.

She learned that the world was unfair that day, and it had sparked in her a need to fix it. The guilt of what happened stayed with her through her younger years as she learned the basics of cultivation refined through years of the Archimedes family’s research. She poured over ethics books, absorbing whatever knowledge she could while she trained.

Eventually, her mother fell out of favor with her father, and the two were sent floors down to branch houses. It was there she met her master, Robert, during an excursion into the lower areas of the city. It had been an act of rebellion on her part, a way to strike against her mother who treated her as nothing more than a political tool to regain her standing.

Her goal had been to find something that would let her break the arranged marriage her mother had set up. What she found was a cultivator walking through the slums, donating money to beggars and setting up food stalls for those without food. The acts of kindness struck her like a bolt of lighting, and she instantly reached out to him in an attempt to train under him.

It had taken a massive sum of credits to convince him, but convince him she did. The discipleship killed two birds with one stone, as she was able to break off her engagement after her master took her in. She left with him to the Blue Mountain Sect, where she trained with the same zeal she had as a child.

Once she gained her core, Nadia wasted no time in hunting dangerous beasts and cultivators, believing it her mission to act as a shield for those less fortunate. She became one of the strongest hunters in Blue Mountain Sect, and her association with the new Sect Master opened many doors. Nadia gained her own floor and gained the favor of many in Blue Mountain.

She needed to do more, however. Chasing down demonic cultivators associated with Blue Mountain Sect was all well and good, but it wasn’t enough in her eyes. She felt it right to use her powers for everyone, not just those in the sect.

When she joined the Emperor’s hunters, the sect suddenly gave her the cold shoulder. The opened doors in the sect started to close, but she was so caught up in her goal she didn’t notice. Other doors opened, however. Her family, noticing her accomplishments in the Empire, granted her favors. She used them to further her goals, spreading her wealth around in charities.

“And look where that got her,” a voice snorted.

James shook himself out of the swirling memories that encompassed Nadia’s core. He was inside a vast expanse of silent waters that stretched out further than the eye could see. On a small section to James’s right sat a decrepit hut, an urn of ashes resting in the doorway. A small grave sat next to it, both house and grave on top of the water as if it was solid ground.

His demonic tenant lazed on the wall of the hut, a scornful look on his face.

“What?” James asked, slightly confused from the sudden change of scenery.

“Acting as a shield, protecting others. That’s what got her killed,” Barish said. “If she had acted like everyone else she’d be alive.”

James seethed at the casual dismissal of his master’s death. “Don’t you dare talk like you know her.”

Barish laughed. “I just spent half a lifetime watching her memories! I think I know her pretty well.”

“Shut up!” James said. He stood, his face a mask of rage.

Barish stood as well, rolling his shoulders. “Am I wrong?”

“You should be praising her!” James shouted. “She’s everything you wanted in a cultivator, right? Someone righteous who would stand up for those who can’t! Like your Chandra.”

Barish walked forward, his face growing cold. “I had a lot of time to think about it, stuck inside your head like I am. And you know the conclusion I came to?”

James shifted into a fighting stance. “What?”

Barish stepped forward. “At the end of it, all that matters is power. Chandra wouldn’t be dead if I had been stronger. Your master wouldn’t be dead if you were stronger.”

He threw his arms wide. “Our foes were right! The only way to protect what we want is to have the power to keep it safe! Otherwise someone else will come by and take it!”

Barish settled into a fighting stance as well. “At the end of the day, all that matters is yourself, and the power you can gain.”

The shade of a demonic cultivator rushed forward, his fist making a beeline for James’s face. “I am going to take your body, take its power, and then take whatever I want!”

James readied himself to meet his parasitic passenger. “I can’t believe I ever had empathy for you.”