Hudson was immediately inundated by a tsunami of dark, cold water smashing through his mindscape. The currents picked him up and spun him about, ripping the bucket out of his hand.

The water was endless, flooding everywhere, and within the span of seconds, his mindscape was completely underwater.

The force of the currents slammed him into the wall of his house, ripping the air from his lungs. The roots climbing the walls dug into his back.

This water was an attack. Whoever the Lurill’shan cultivator was, she had sent this wave of water into his mind in order to eliminate the silicates… and him along with them.

The water was cold, invasive, and foreign to his mindscape. It tried to push down his throat and drown him, but Hudson fought down his panic. How could he fight back against something like this?

There was so much water, how could he possibly get rid of it all? There was no way, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try to do something. Under the panic, he felt angry and frustrated. He was trying to help these people, maybe even save a few, and this was the thanks that he got.

Anger and frustration – he could use that. This was his mind. His space. It responded to his thoughts and emotions; his anger had made the sun in here hotter before, and could do so again.

He pulled on his resentment, and stoked it higher. There was always more anger to find, and rather than hold it back, he actively encouraged it, giving into the rage. He screamed his frustration under the blanket of cold water, and the world within his mindscape responded.

His house burst into flame, creating massive streamers of super-heated steam. A harsh red light permeated the yard, reflected through the water. He focused on the oak tree, and the half-burnt roots crawling up his house, and they burst into flame as well, creating a massive amount of steam underneath the floodwaters.

Hudson was caught up in the steam, and rocketed over his roof until he finally breached the surface of the water far above him.

The sky was a purplish red, a dying star filling the horizon from east to west, north and south. The water around him on the surface was visibly evaporating under this raging sun. Hudson gulped in a huge breath of air, and immediately began screaming.

“Get out!” he yelled with all his might, and to his utter shock, the water retreated almost immediately.

He landed in a muddy yard, and the sudden surprise of all of the water leaving his mindscape helped knock him out of his scorching anger. He slowly brought his emotions under control, breathing deeply, appreciating the silence of his mind.

The annoying buzzing was gone – the Lurill’shan’s attack had at least gotten rid of the silicate intrusion.

“What are… who–” the deep voice began to speak again.

“I said get out, and STAY OUT!” Hudson’s rage immediately flared again, and his yard became a sauna, the hot sun baking away the remnants of the watery attack. He struggled once more to bring his anger under control, and this time it was more difficult.

The wall of water pushing onto one side of his mindscape vanished back into a white mist.

His house was trashed, burnt and broken. Parts of the roof were just missing, walls were collapsed. The yard was a mixture of baked clay and thick mud puddles. The outbuilding was crushed, bits and pieces of it scattered through the mud and floating in the lotus pond.

The oak tree had flames still smoldering on the ends of all of its branches, but actually looked fairly decent. It was sturdy and strong, even through fire and storm – as would be expected. The roots that were climbing up the sides of his house were even thicker and longer, if his memory served him correctly. They were also still burning, an acrid smell mixing with the cloying humidity of the atmosphere.

Hudson stalked out of his mindscape quickly, still furious at the violent intrusion and now worried about what could be happening in the real world.

His bodily senses returned to him and he immediately noticed he was on fire. Or perhaps more accurately, “on steam.” He had activated his sigils while inside of his mindscape, and they had taken effect in the real world. Intricate tattoos of burning roots covered his skin, extending from his feet all the way up to his scalp.

He couldn’t see much because of the steam he was creating under the water, so he pushed on the sigils. They did not easily deactivate, but gritting his teeth and pressing on them with his will, the steam stopped and the markings on his skin gradually faded from view.

He was floating in the water above the platform, and the soldier he’d tied up was floating next to him.

A Lurill’shan woman stood several steps away, cradling a burned hand. She was wearing a similar outfit as Xith’le’so had, and sported a rainbow colored tassel attached to her knee. She stared at him while three other members of her team, also wearing tassels on their arms or legs, swam over.

“I told you to wait,” Hudson spat out. “I told you I was handling it. And you didn’t listen to me.” The anger he had awakened threatened to come back, but he ruthlessly cut it off.

“Enough,” Xith’le’so said from behind him. She swam quickly through the water – somehow as fast as Hudson could run on land – and stopped on the platform in between Hudson and the other women.

Where had she been when the silicates had swarmed this platform? Or when the other woman had attacked him? Better late than never, he supposed.

They all startled again when Cor appeared out of a rift beside Hudson, casually draping one arm over Hudson’s shoulder, the other hand on his rifle. Hudson wasn’t sure it would fire underwater, but if it could, Cor looked ready and able to use it.

“The two of you clearly have some explaining to do, both about your abilities and your inability to follow simple directions,” Xith’le’so said to them after a brief shake of her head. She then turned to the other women and continued, “but my apologies, sisters, they are guests of the reef. And this one is a cultivator of the self.”

“He is not tasseled, and he was poisoned by the abominations,” the woman who had attacked him said, shaking her head. “The regulations are clear. Guest, soldier, civilian or loved one. It doesn’t matter.”

Xith’le’so turned to him, and reached out a hand. Hudson shook his head at the offer to check his mindscape, as she had done before. He wasn’t going to let anyone else in his mindspace for a while after that last experience.

“Nope,” he said, and began putting together the patterns for an inverted Mind Gate technique, just in case it came to that. “Ask her,” he said, pointing at the cultivator with the burned hand.

When all eyes returned to her, the woman reluctantly continued. “I embraced his spirit, and released a flood of my essence into his mind. The poison of the abominations was silenced. I did what the regulations require, and what we are trained to do. No more, no less.”

There was a moment of silence.

“And how were you…burned?” One of the other members of the small group spoke up. She had two tassels, one on each arm, whereas the rest (including Xith’le’so) only had one.

“This follower of the Disciples… His body and mind both erupted in flames, before pushing my essence out of his mind.”

“Still not a follower of the Disciples,” Hudson felt compelled to mutter, but his comment was ignored.

There was another moment of silence.

The leader of the small reaction force, if more tassels meant more authority or leadership, performed a curious gesture with her head and gills. Hudson interpreted it as a shrug.

“Fine. Let us report to the elders then. Everyone here is clean, and we have wounded to take care of. A word later, Xith, if you would.”

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Xith’le’so nodded, and with that, the group walked away to care for the soldiers and aid in the clean up and processing of the silicate husks.

The woman who had invaded his mind and been burned for it was the last to turn away, and her gaze lingered on Hudson. She did not appear angry, or even upset. More contemplative – or even hopeful?

Most of the time, the expressions of the Lurill’shan’s were eerily similar to what Hudson was used to, but he couldn’t quite understand hers. Why would her eyes hold hope, when his held fiery murder?

MEANWHILE…..On the Former Trial Planet…..

The Disciple Praetecoure stepped out of the rift, the last to arrive through the portal. The unnatural attractiveness of his features sent an involuntary shiver through members of the strike team waiting for him to arrive. They had secured the immediate area, then returned to wait, kneeling and gazing up at him in almost worshipful reverence.

George Adams, Sr. wasn’t kneeling. He had thrown away everything for this chance; he’d lowered his head and begged already… but he still had his limits.

His fingernails dug into the palms of his hands. That Elenor Chiang and her schemes… if only she’d just stayed offworld, fighting the silicates with her pet mortals, like she’d been doing for the past few decades. She wasn’t part of the clans. Why had she meddled in their business?

He regretted the outcome of his actions, but couldn’t see where he’d gone wrong. He’d not had any choice, not really; it was the only path forward. The silver lining was that his path was now incredibly simple: the only way forward was to grow stronger, and ascend from the ashes of his defeat. And maybe, his descendant and the bearer of his name might also ascend with him.

If he wasn’t dead – or worse.

“The silicates?” Praetecoure asked.

“No immediate sign of their presence within 5 kilometers,” the leader of the strike group said. She was at peak Core Formation, just like George Sr. was, but the rest of her team was a mix of cultivation levels. He’d asked her name, but she’d not responded to that question or any of his other questions.

“And the young Adams’ scion sent to the trial here?”

“Also no sign.”

George Sr. took the soul flame artifact out to show it to the team and to the Disciple. It still burned, if weakly.

Praetecoure made a brief hand motion, and George Sr. passed the artifact to the strike team leader, and one of the members of the team in the Foundation Building stage stepped forward.

The young man sported a scraggly mustache and goatee that desperately needed a shave. After clearing a space on the floor of rubble and dust, he removed arcane tools from a storage bracelet and quickly assembled a portable formation. The collection of poles fit together snugly, each individual pole enchanted with sigils and diagrams, forming a star-shaped formation on the ground.

Gently placing the soul flame artifact in the center of the formation, the scraggly-mustached cultivator activated the formation and a wave of qi – invisible to mundane senses, but clear to those with higher cultivation – pulsed from the formation. A response came back almost immediately. A section of the formation star began to glow with the same color as the soul flame.

George Sr. turned and began walking through the partially collapsed cavern. At one end of the cavern., a giant hole, drilled by the silicates through the rock, rose to the surface of this small world. The other end was a mess of broken and shattered rock.

The formation had pointed towards the collapsed side of the cavern, and the reaction had been almost instantaneous, so he was close by. George Jr. was likely trapped beneath the rubble.

The rest of the strike team followed, and they began carefully searching under the collapsed rocks.

After no more than ten minutes, a shout went up. George Sr. hurried over quickly. The member of the strike team was clearly holding something, lifting it in their hands, but it was invisible.

“George! Is that you? It’s me, the clan head, with the Disciples, here to rescue you,” George Sr. said. He reached out his hands and felt the rough outlines of a body. They came away covered in blood.

There was no response from the invisible body. The team brought the invisible body back with them and laid it down in a clear section of the cavern. The formation expert put their qi-sonar device back into their storage device, handing the soul flame artifact to George Sr. He then took out a much larger set of poles and assembled them with quick and practiced movements on top of the invisible body.

Another member of the team – clearly the medic, based on the number of pouches and medical tools hanging from various quick-access places on her body – assisted the formation expert. After the formation was assembled, a few tense minutes passed as the medic worked through different interfaces on the formation.

“I need to disrupt his connection with heaven and earth,” the medic said.

“That might kill him!” George Sr. protested. “He might only be alive because of the techniques he’s maintained so far.”

“If he dies I’ll revive him right here,” the medic said dispassionately. “And he’s not using a qi technique, I can tell that much. It’s a powerful sigil technique, and to treat him, I have to disrupt it.”

Praetecoure didn’t say anything and just nodded.

The medic adjusted a pole in the formation, braced herself, and then activated it. George Jr. appeared within the formation, and he was in terrible shape. His legs were crushed, his left arm missing. Burns covered his face. Deep furrows were carved into his face, the fingernails on his right hand covered in blood and skin.

Madness shown behind his eyes. His lips slipped upwards into the grotesque approximation of a smile.

George Sr.’s shoulders slumped. His descendant was alive, yes, but perhaps it would be better if he wasn’t.

He felt an arm on his shoulder. He looked up, and it was Praetecoure.

“Not all is lost,” he said to George Sr. kindly, then walked over to the formation. He reached down and touched George Jr. on the temple. The glaze of madness in his eyes washed away, and the young master’s eyes closed.

“His induction was prior to the trial, yes?”

“His… induction?” George Sr. said hesitatingly.

Praetecoure stood and sighed deeply.

“I will give you one more chance, but please know that it is your last,” he said plainly. “I will smear your sorry flesh across this planetoid if you ever dissemble, obfuscate… or Heavens’ forbid, lie to me ever again.

“Know that I could easily pry the information I seek from your quivering corpse, but a distaste for dirtying my robes prevents excesses of violence… to a certain degree.”

The Nascent Soul cultivator’s voice never wavered or rose in pitch. He could have been describing the weather.

“The global AI, the director assisting with our planetary management,” George spat out in a rush. “Let me start over. Yes, he has received an advanced integration with multiple inheritances, offered by and facilitated by our planetary director.”

“Excellent,” Praetecoure said. “His foundation has cracked under the strain… but whose hasn’t?”

He chuckled softly, and glanced at the strike team around him.

“He can still grow more powerful and be of use, aiding me in the war effort. His sacrifices and his growth will not go to waste.”

George Sr. struggled with the Disciple’s words. He should feel relieved, shouldn’t he? His descendant had been driven mad, succumbing to the pressure of the Faustian bargain arranged with Ux, the planetary AI. The consciousnesses of deceased Adams’ family members, forcefully integrated into the young descendant in a last-ditch effort to reverse the clan’s fortune – these voices, refined and guided by the captive silicate, had driven George past the brink.

But Praetecoure said he could still grow? That he would not go to waste? George Sr. felt an unease begin to creep up his spine.

“It may not be obvious to you, Adams,” Praetecoure said, his tone that of a confidant happily telling a secret. “But your young descendant will fit in perfectly on this strike team. We had need of a new scout, and George Jr.’s facility with that invisibility sigil is quite excellent.

“His tenacity, will to survive, will to overcome, yes, these are all good things. Needful things, for what is to come… But first, he needs some help.”

“What help?” George Sr. asked, his throat dry.

“He needs someone to share his burdens, to take up some of the heavy load he has borne, so that he can recover… And if you are to join this team, well… It’s best if you fit in.”

The only path is through, George told himself, as he was led over to the unconscious body of his descendant. The signs had been there, but he had not wanted to understand. Every member of this team was infected with the consciousnesses of others. They all walked the knife’s edge of madness and sanity in the pursuit of greater power, and now he would too.

“Do not resist.” George Sr. lay down on the ground next to his descendant, George Jr.

He had been naive. That deal struck with Ux, the planetary AI… no, the silicate servant of the Disciples. He’d thought his plan was outside of the Disciple’s purview; he thought he had been clever. But it was far more likely, he realized, that he had been tricked and manipulated instead.

I will endure, he said, bringing his will to bear, and pushing down as a foreign will impinged on his consciousness. Taken from the mind of his descendant, and flowing into his own.

I will become stronger, he thought to himself.

No.

We will become stronger, the voices said within his mind.