I looked at the city stretching out in front of me, and I couldn’t help but wonder, for a moment, how I’d gotten here. Parts of it were still smoking, though luckily those were very small, easily contained ones, all things considered. A large hole gaped in the wall, with the stone that used to fill it scattered widely through both the field outside and the street below the wall inside the city. A lot of rickety houses stood outside the walls, and their owners could probably count themselves lucky that the vast majority were indeed still standing.
I sighed and lightly nudged my horse, getting it to move. A lot of people had gathered outside their homes, and it felt like half the city was watching me. They didn’t cheer, of course, but they also didn’t jeer or shout or throw things. They were simply watching in silence. I could almost imagine I could taste the fear in the air coating the back of my tongue when I swallowed.
This was the second city we’d conquered in the Dominion, a bit over a hundred kilometers southeast of the first. Though not the last one, hopefully. The battle had been short and vicious, but not as bad as it could have been. While the Zarian had hardly left us the city uncontested, the caliber of resistance we’d found showed they hadn’t seriously intended it to hold against us.
There’d been almost no resistance worth speaking of in the towns and villages around here and Niali. That was to be expected. The Zarian had to have some sort of plan, though, and I had to assume they were working on it. Maybe we’d manage to disrupt it. Maybe not. There isn’t much I can do about that except try my best to meet the challenges in front of me.
I smiled slightly, gazing out over the watching crowd. They weren’t as hostile as they could have been. Probably the Basement’s efforts, in combination with whatever rumors trickled across the border, anyway. It’s sometimes easy to forget that this war is less than two years old. There might have been tensions before that, but there was also some trade. And that always carries information.
At my entourage’s fast pace, it didn’t take long until we reached the center of the city. I dismounted in front of a castle the soldiers had secured to use as my base, and headed inside, trailed by my companions and guards. The army was still sorting things out, and I’d stay out of their way for now.
The building was obviously older than my last abode, but the previous owners had tried to compensate with thick carpets, ostentatious furniture, and paintings. My guards would be either happy or anxious about the hollow walls and concealed entrances I sensed, but I walked past them without slowing down.
Tenira finally broke the silence. “What now?”
I turned my head, but kept walking. “I guess we take some time to settle down. You all can probably use a bit of downtime, anyway. Personally, I feel like I need to do some deep cultivation.”
The old castle had an open roof, and I managed to find my way there without taking a single wrong turn. There was a balustrade with crenelations and empty spots where they used to keep siege engines. A few weeds clung tenaciously to life between the stones. It was a remarkably peaceful setting, given the outside.
I stepped closer to the balustrade, looking out over the city. The castle was built atop a small hill, which gave me a good view. Another one, on the other side of the city, housed the temple of the Storm. At this moment, soldiers were probably still rounding up priests and acolytes, trying to get at their records and gather information about the Dominion’s new High Temple. And also getting everyone outside before they set the fires. I might have felt bad about costing these people their jobs if their organization hadn’t agitated against us. And half of them would probably get new jobs with the other temples in the city. Recent efforts notwithstanding, the Dominion was still just as polytheistic as the Empire, in the end.
Once I saw the first plumes of smoke drifting up into the air, I stepped back and chose a nice sunlit spot on the stones of the keep’s roof to sit down. I closed my eyes and started to focus on the world around me, beginning to pull in qi.
I’d been nearing my next breakthrough, the qi already contained in my dantian filling it up and creating a subtle sense of pressure that I recognized well by now. Over the last few days, it had gotten both less intense and more so. I felt like it had lost some stiffness, though that was probably … well, whatever you called the cultivation equivalent of ‘psychosomatic’.
Slowly, I sank deeper and deeper into my cultivation, pulling in qi and sending it along its paths through my body. Ever since I’d mastered my shapeshifting to the extent I had, and especially since the I’d had the crap burned out of me and survived, I’d come to realize how much my body was not quite a physical vessel. Or not just one, at least. But as I cultivated closer and closer to a breakthrough, with the qi straining against my core, I pondered how that related to the less visible aspects of what made me the person I was.
As I sent my qi crashing through my channels, sending spikes of pain through me, before crushing it into an expanded core for the first time, I still pondered the issue. I knew there were questions I’d never be able to answer. I wasn’t entirely human, only partly. I’m not human, I let the thought linger in my mind, despite my instinctive need to weaken it. Usually, I was a very good facsimile of a normal human, but in the end, it was a pretense. Not entirely, of course. But hard to define exactly. I didn’t know if some things in which I might diverge from the population average were just effects of my personality.
What I could probably never be sure of was exactly how things you might consider as belonging to one’s personality related to my spirit nature. Factors like the shapeshifting and dreams and immortality and even intuition were clear and far easier to deal with, in that sense.
Maybe it took riding triumphant into a vanquished city and feeling only muted triumph, a hint of satisfaction, and considering the inhabitants’ reaction that pushed me to this contemplation. Because I wasn’t even trying to make myself feel remorseful or constrained. Not that it would have changed much.
I continued cultivating, feeling the new stage begin to settle in my core and channels. I could not deny that my emotions, or emotional capacity, were somewhat … dim. Not to the extent of genuine sociopathy. But my inner landscape was, for all the rare blinding flashes of anger, a dull painting. Oh, I knew I was capable of it. If nothing else, I held deep and genuine affection for some people. Something I would not call anything less than love, for a select few. But I could not deny that I only cared about other causes or people, even my subjects, in an abstract way. In a sense, that caring was simply my choice, since it would need little but some mental readjustment for me to simply stop.
I exhaled and opened my eyes, looking up into the stars in the night sky for a moment, before I stood. Almost instinctively, my senses reached out and found Tenira close by, in one of the upper floors not far from me. I smiled to myself, dusted my robe off and started walking. I wouldn’t bring light to the mysteries of my spirit heritage, or my father’s design choices, in one session. But I was okay with the resulting amalgamation, all things considered. At this moment, standing under the stars in the middle of an enemy city while the sun started to rise on its eastern side, I felt perhaps more free than I ever had.
That feeling only lasted until I joined Tenira. She pushed a stack of folders towards me, barely looking up from the documents she was working on in the large office off the suite they’d given me. “You have a lot to do,” she commented.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
I sighed and sank into the chair at the other side of the table, taking the papers. “What’s the time?”
“You were out for about a day,” she answered. “Congratulations.”
I nodded and started reading the first report. I should probably have known better than to do this right after the army won a battle. They appeared to have done fairly well at containing the city, and there were no major outbreaks of resistance. I still wished Kiyanu was here. But he seemed to be staying in the capital for now.
We worked quietly together for a few hours. I read reports, penned short answers on occasion, and checked some of Tenira’s work. As always, she was a great help, and the stack of documents shrank easily. Despite the paperwork, I realized I enjoyed this quiet time together.
I looked up, watching my girlfriend for a moment as she sat frowning slightly at the sheet of paper she was reading. I’d gotten an idea, but I needed to find the right words if I was going to pursue it.
Before I could, the door opened and Aston walked in, followed by two more guards. His expression and the feel of his aura had me shooting out of my chair right away.
“Your Highness,” he reported, “there appears to have been an attack on Prince Alaster.”
I stared at him for a moment, before I hurriedly stepped closer, as if that could help me get answers. “What happened? How is he?” I’d left Al behind in Niali. The city should have been secured.
“We’re unsure, my lady,” he answered quietly. “The prince appears to be alive, but we only have confused reports so far.”
I nodded, still feeling like someone had just emptied an icy lake on my head. “I’ll go,” I said. Then I took off.
The corridors of the palace blurred past and I ascended the steps four at a time. I ripped my outer robe, and was already growing wings from my shoulders and back when I reached the roof. I took a running start, then jumped upwards with all of my enhanced muscles. Flapping my wings let me quickly rise over the city, already angling in the right direction. As soon as I was past the qi shield, I breathed in deeply and gathered air qi, forming it into a technique that helped propel me forward.
Aston had kept up with me easily, which wasn’t surprising, considering his cultivation. A few other guards trailed me as well. He pulled up beside me closely enough he had to mind my wings, looking like he was going for a light jog in the air. “Your Highness, that was unwise.”
I glanced at him. With my wings and air qi, I was quicker like this than if I used a flying sword. The other city wasn’t that far away, and we were still picking up speed. It wouldn’t take long. I took a moment to change my wings to a sky-blue color, then did the same with my hair. Unfortunately, my clothes were less malleable. Though I was wearing blue, so that should be okay. Like I did often enough not even Kajare had asked me about my favorite color (which was actually red, as it happened, I just didn’t like how I looked in it.)
I forced my mind back on task and focused on Aston. “I doubt anyone expected me to rush off like a headless chicken after my brother,” I answered. “If they have a strike team in place, they probably deserve to take a fair shot.” I paused and considered the situation. Then I winced a little. “Raise the alert with the other guards, and make sure security around my companions is heightened.”
“Of course, my lady. Measures are already being taken.”
“Good. Now, speed me up,” I demanded.
Aston sighed but circulated some qi. It felt like I was picked up by a wind corridor even stronger than what I’d been using.
The flight passed in a blur of adrenaline, and not soon enough we slowed down and descended over Niali. I didn’t even need to focus on my qi senses to know where to go. We flew towards a section close to the docks by the river, which was bustling like a kicked beehive. Soldiers had established a perimeter and were herding people out, as well as gathering inside. They cleared a space for us to land quickly. I barely remembered to change my coloring back to normal.
Looking around, I quickly found Al, who was sitting on the ground in the middle of a cluster of guards and soldiers. I started walking forward, staggered, then shook my head and dispersed my wings. They shifted my balance and made walking harder.
“Al! Are you alright?”
He jumped up and tried to push past the soldiers, who retreated to let me reach him. He basically jumped into my arms, and I hugged him hard enough to make him wheeze.
I looked past him, and my gaze stuck to the body lying in a pool of blood close by, still undisturbed. Ru Lis’ empty eyes gazed at the sky. I’d assigned her to my little brother before we started this push, since I’d have Aston with me.
It seemed it was a good thing I had. One more life lost to Jideia’s attacks on me. I’m really getting tired of this. Well, I suppose I’ll have to arrange a proper funeral. She was actually some very distant relation, not that it mattered. After Kei Weriga, I’d made a point of asking for the dossiers of new guards. So I knew the Empire had lost out, since she might actually have made it into the eighth stage.
“What happened?” I asked.
Al stepped out of the hug, and one of his other guards spoke up. “It was a surprise attack by what appears to have been one of the regular dockworkers, Your Highness.” He gestured at the remains of another person, less recognizable, a short distance away. “He had to have been in the first stage, but suddenly moved far more quickly than he should have been able to. Captain Ru managed to intercept his attack, and our response eliminated him quickly.”
“I see.”
I stepped closer, straining my senses. From his description, this was the same method they used in the attempt on my life earlier. Probably done by the same person.
Aston moved in front of me, and I rolled my eyes. “Don’t fret, Aston. I’m not in any danger.” I moved around him and beside the corpse of the probably unwitting attacker.
The reason I’d come here like this, besides wanting to be with Al, was because I might catch things other people would miss. There was a lot of what I could only call qi residue here, but my intuition was definitely starting to twitch.
I swept the body and grounds carefully with both my eyes and qi senses, but I could tell I wasn’t on the right track. This had all happened very recently. While it would probably be too much to hope for that the perpetrator was still close by, they couldn’t have gone far, and they didn’t have much time to cover their tracks.
I looked upward, turned around, then frowned and moved my head back around as I realized what I’d almost missed. A leap brought me on top of a nearby building, probably a warehouse, and I quickly erected a net of qi around a spot just past the edge of the roof, where you’d have a good view of events below. It was little more than a pinprick in space a little darker than the surrounding air, and even this close, I only picked up the faintest whisper of its qi presence. But I didn’t need more than that.
I took a deep breath and carefully crafted a shell of qi, laying intricate patterns around the working. I hadn’t quite realized I even knew this one before today, but now I recalled a moonlit night about five years ago and the guiding touch of Mother’s qi. She’d taught me this personally. It was a technique that mainly used light qi, but there was also a component of darkness, which made it one of the secretive techniques passed down by the Leri clan.
With a last flourish, I finished the technique, and the hole in the air in front of me ripped open. It constituted one end of a link stretching a few kilometers away, to its creator, and now my technique reversed it. I only got a blurry picture, with dampened and distorted sounds filtering through the connection, but it allowed me to get a good look at the man behind it. A young man, with dark hair and a nondescript appearance, but bright blue eyes. Although I didn’t get much of a sense of his aura through this, I did sense his qi through his technique, and I knew I was dealing with another spirit-child.
His eyes widened for a moment, then they narrowed and his lips twisted in a smile. “I’m impressed, Princess Inaris,” he drawled in Zarian. “I guess today is your lucky day.”
I met his gaze calmly, showing no reaction. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll turn yourself in now,” I said. “Since my brother survived, I’m inclined to be merciful. If you make me hunt you down, the consequences will be on your head. You might be the child of a spirit, but that’s not going to help you.”
He laughed, as if I’d told the funniest joke he’d ever heard, loudly and with no apparent restraint. “A child of the Auditor doesn’t just surrender,” he told me, suddenly serious again. “Where would be the fun in that, sweetheart?”
I raised an eyebrow. I’d heard that name before. Not a Greater Spirit, but powerful, and an ally of the Storm. Probably in about the same position as Mior for the Moon.
“I assure you, this is anything but fun,” I answered. “And I expect you won’t be laughing for much longer.”
“Promises, promises,” the man said. Then he made a cutting gesture and the qi forming the technique ripped apart.
I took a deep breath, then turned. “Canvass the city,” I said to Aston, who’d followed me but stood outside the field of view. I created an illusion showing the spirit-child.
But I had a sinking feeling he was going to be long gone by the time we reached his current location. He wouldn’t go down that easily.