Kasri couldn’t help but snort at Dahlia’s example. “Cultivators can’t control themselves. Their chi takes over their brains and they become slaves to their desires. And their emotions.”
“Uh-huh. Just like a toddler with their temper tantrums, just a whole lot more violent. Did you ever ask yourself why that happens? Why does someone become a cultivator and is instantly a whole lot worse than they were just minutes ago?” Dahlia asked.
“...Because their chi takes over their brains.” Kasri repeated. “Didn’t I just say that?”
“You did, but it isn’t completely true. Chi doesn’t just turn you into an emotionally stunted and irritable monster.” Dahlia tapped the side of her head. “It gets in your thoughts. Your memories. Makes them crisper and clearer. You remember something for way too long, and you can feel it like it was yesterday. If you want something, you need to have it. If you hate something, it has to die. Imagine the most vivid emotion you’ve ever felt about anything, then imagine that same intensity applying to absolutely everything.”
Lillian nodded solemnly. “It’s so easy to get angry at something small. Too easy to order someone to be your slave. When the only thing stopping you is your own power, and your sect actively encourages this kind of unhealthy thinking, you end up with everything you see today. Grown men and women acting like children. Murder thrown around as a punishment for the slightest inconvenience.”
“Because it’s so easy to give in.” Dahlia snorted and crossed her arms. “When the rest of the world is filled with monsters, why bother even trying? Why control yourself when everyone else lets their inner demons run free? Why limit your power when you’ve worked so, so hard to get it? Then multiply that by a hundred cultivators, who only respect power, and you’ve got a family. Multiply it by a thousand, and you’ve got a clan. Multiply it by ten thousand, and you’ve got a sect.”
She whistled and held her finger up, where Glitter floated down to rest like a bird. “Cultivators don’t die during childbirth. They recover much, much faster the stronger they are. That leads to people seeing children–their own or other people’s–as replaceable. If you talk to our master, he’d tell you about how the sect–this one we’re standing at right now–was initially started to try and curb that mentality. It’s better than almost anywhere else, but again, I’m comparing it to clans that’d put on an entrance trial with an eighty percent mortality rate and a seventy-five percent failure rate for the survivors.”
“So do you have what it takes to be better than that? Not just to control your urges, but to completely eliminate them?” Dahlia made a gesture with her finger, and Glitter surged towards Kasri.
The specter thumped him in the chest, carrying about as much power behind him as a feather. Kasri smiled and held out his finger just as Dahlia had, and Glitter took a perch while chattering nonsense.
“I honestly don’t know.” Kasri admitted while he watched Glitter circle in on himself until he was as tightly wound as a roll of ribbon. A head and two black eyes popped out of the center, resting on the rest of Glitter’s body as he took Kasri in. “I’ve never had power before, so I can’t say what it’d do to me. And… isn’t this a little much for a recruitment speech? The clans that took the others just said ‘you’re coming with me’, and that was that.”
Another specter, the one that Kasri had apologized to, floated over and took a seat on his wrist. This one looked right up at him with smoky white eyes, then huffed and went completely limp; draping itself over his arm like a sash.
“The simple fact that you’re asking those questions is a good sign.” Lillian smiled, watching as the third specter, a stouter mass of earthy green and coppery brown, moved to settle on Kasri’s head. “And we aren’t forcefully recruiting you. You have the option to say no. Or to run away screaming if that’s your style. We don’t want you making a decision with half the information and regretting it later.”
Kasri nodded. Especially with the poor emotional control of a new cultivator, that could be disastrous. For him, and for any new disciples he might train alongside. “I think I get it. So how do I sign up?”
Dahlia threw a thumb over her shoulder. “You follow us to our carriage and we get out of here. Our master might not think this place is terrible, but it still gives me the shivers whenever I feel all those hateful stares. Glitter, Shimmer, Flicker, get back here. You can play with our new disciple later.”
Three different sounds, one fast and cacophonous, one high and babbling, and one as deep and long as an earthquake, all rang out as the specters drifted back to Dahlia. She held out her hand for them, and when they touched her skin, they shifted and desaturated until they almost looked like a liquid. A liquid that rearranged itself into tattoos that crept up her skin and under her robe.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Ah, that feels better.” Dahlia sighed in relief. “Well, like I said, it’s time to go. Lillian, you ready to clear a path if it comes to that?”
Lillian nodded. “I don’t feel any hostile chi between us and the carriage, but that could change in a blink.” She urged Kasri to start walking and nudged him between her and her sister. “Stay between us so we can protect you. If you feel anything out of the ordinary, even if you think it’s nothing, tell us.”
“Yeah. We can’t be too cautious with new blood.” Dahlia agreed. She swept her hand out in an arc in front of her, leaving a smoky purple trail that dispersed moments after it formed. “Stay closer to Lillian. She can heal pretty much anything if it’s fresh.”
“Mmhm.” Lillian confirmed. “Even if you lose a limb, I can easily reattach it for about fifteen minutes. Any longer than that and it’ll be a whole hour long procedure.”
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The festival grounds bled away to the flat area surrounding them, with sparsely dotted houses and shops where the temporary disciples lived. Other than Kasri, apparently. He carefully surveyed all the people he saw, most of which barely paid them any mind, and even those that noticed didn’t seem to care. They were too busy running between bakeries and shops bringing goods to the festival.
Neither Lillian nor Dahlia said anything while they walked. They both seemed to be on high alert, enough to set Kasri on edge worrying about every shadow he saw. He knew cultivators could be violent, but would they attack for no reason? He gulped as he realized that ‘no reason’ could be a reason in itself, and would later be justified as a punishment for one reason or another.
Yet nothing happened, and the carriage came into view. Kasri let out a sigh of relief at the dark wooden thing, inlaid with silver and pink filigree that buzzed with chi. It gave off a feeling of absolute security, in addition to… something else. Like looking at something off in the distance, knowing it was so much larger than what his eyes were taking in.
“That went a lot smoother than I expected.” Dahlia observed, swiping her hand in an ‘X’ pattern of smoky purple. “Looks like the camouflage was overkill.”
Lillian shrugged. “You never know. It could be the entire reason we didn’t get attacked.” She reached out to grab the carriage’s door, the pink filigree shifting to the colour of light that shone through pale skin as it hissed open. “Oh, put your hand on the door before you come in. The carriage needs to register your chi so the security doesn’t go off.”
“Good call.” Dahlia said from halfway into the carriage. She shifted to put herself on one of the two benches, which looked like it could fit three people shoulder-to-shoulder. “You’ll feel your hand get uncomfortably cold for a second, and when you feel your fingers tense up involuntarily, that’s the sign you’re registered.”
Kasri nodded and walked up to the wood as Lillian followed her sister into the carriage. He briefly wondered who’d be driving the carriage, and what would be pulling it, but those thoughts were stripped away when his hand pressed against the wood. He felt the cold Dahlia told him he’d feel, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. It reminded him of a winter morning next to the fire, flames nipping at his face as the cold surrounded him like a blanket. Everything had been quiet save for the popping embers, and he’d simply sat motionless until the flames died down.
His fingers tensed into a tight fist and pulled a yelp of surprise from deep in his throat. “Whaagh! You didn’t say it’d be that strong!”
“You don’t have long nails, so your palm’s fine. No reason to warn you.” Dahlia said as Kasri rounded the door, but he could see the vestiges of a smirk on her face. “Pull the door shut behind you. This thing takes a minute to warm up when it’s just the two of us, so we could be sitting here for up to ten minutes depending on how much weight you add.”
Kasri patted his stomach, which was almost hollow from constantly being on the edge of starvation. “I don’t think I’m–”
Lillian cut him off with a laugh. “Not that kind of weight. The weight of your soul. The carriage pulls from the chi of everyone inside of it to work, and since it can’t pull from a non-cultivator, it’ll have to calculate for that.
Kasri nodded, pulled the door shut behind him, and took a seat next to Lillian. He then placed his hands in his lap after a moment of complete uncertainty as to what to do with them. “So… how far is your sect? A few weeks? A month?”
“Four months if you’re taking a normal carriage.” Dahlia said, then waved her hand when Kasri balked at the distance. “I said if you’re taking a normal carriage, which this one obviously isn’t. We’ll stop in a few villages on the way, and we’ll start you on the absolute cultivation basics while we’re going.”
“It’ll take us three weeks of straight traveling, but we’ll have to stop a few times for supplies and stops we’ve mapped out.” Lillian clarified. “By the time we get there, you should have a good grasp on the basics. Your body’s already been forged in chi, which is usually one of the more lengthy parts of the process. That gives us a good place to start.”
Kasri scrunched his face into a ball of confusion. He didn’t remember forging himself in chi.
Dahlia piped up to clear the air. “Whatever you did for a year concentrated your body with chi. You can’t use any of it yet, but it’ll make the process of turning yourself into a cultivator that much easier. How much do you know about the steps before you can start making your own way?”
“I know I need a cultivation technique. But mine doesn’t work.” Kasri pressed his hands together to show what he meant. “Should I keep trying with this one, or is that pointless?”
Lillian and Dahlia shared a concerned look. Dahlia leaned back and made a sweeping gesture from Lillian to Kasri, to which Lillian nodded and cleared her throat.
“Kasri, you have absolutely everything backwards.” She said seriously. “There are five steps before you should even try to cultivate. Concentrating chi in your body, your mind, and your soul, then taking in specific chi, and basic chi manipulation. Once you’ve got all that down, then you can start cutting the basic pathways through your soul. That’s when you’ll need a cultivation technique.”
“Oh.” Kasri felt his ears growing warm with embarrassment. “But my… no, nevermind. It didn’t work anyway, so there’s no point defending it.”
“That’s the way to think.” Dahlia chuckled.
The carriage began to shudder ever so slightly, as if it were rolling over smooth stone. Kasri looked around for a window before he noticed that there were none, and that he now sat a little further away from Lillian. And a lot further from Dahlia.