As Jack stared out through the windows of his ‘penthouse suite’, he couldn’t help but note the almost frenetic energy that pervaded the city’s inhabitants as they bustled through Ten Huo’s busy streets.
Word had gotten around that war was coming to the North. In fact, the news had become common knowledge in the city within days of him finding out himself.
Who had leaked the information, he did not know, though he knew both Shui and the Magistrate were each individually determined to find out. And when they did, there’d be hell to pay. A panic was the last thing either of the city’s leaders wanted at this critical juncture, and it was making the actual preparations for the coming conflict harder than they needed to be.
Given the timing, he’d have been worried about being fingered himself as the culprit, but given each of the powerful womens’ carefully veiled words on the subject, he had a feeling each already had their own suspicions. Ones that thankfully didn’t involve him.
Either way, laws against hoarding and profiteering were already being enforced in an attempt to keep the costs of basic goods from skyrocketing. They’d already been high, but within hours of the initial rumors spreading they’d, almost as one, gone well beyond the means of the ‘average’ peasant.
The Magistrate had put a swift end to that by hanging a number of relatively well-known merchants. Mortal merchants of course, but the message she was attempting to convey was heard loud and clear by the mercantile cultivators those men and women had ultimately answered to.
As a result, food costs were currently hovering at a rate just shy of what the average mortal family could afford.
For now at least, Jack thought. Some part of me doubts that even the power of the Magistrate is capable of changing the realities of supply and demand.
Sighing to himself, he watched as a ragged looking youth down below hawked what looked to be ‘rat skewers’ from the safety of a rundown little food cart.
Most people who passed by looked disgusted by the prospect and avoided the plucky young entrepreneur. Jack knew that wouldn’t last though. Eventually, desperation would see those same people come clamoring for the youth’s wares.
The thought actually made him feel nostalgic. And a little hungry. It had been a while since he’d eaten any rat. Back in the warrens, a good rodent-skewer had been considered a welcome alternative to corpo-starch.
Probably still was.
Fortunately for me, I’ve got access to far more palatable sources of protein, he thought as behind him, his dinner was placed onto the table by Lin.
Venison, if his sense of smell didn’t deceive him, likely plucked from the walls just that morning by the Imperial supply corps and supplied to him through his new government contacts. Hell, he didn’t even mind that the animal had likely had some kind of weird mutation before it had been rendered down into mouthwatering steaks.
Like wings or… the ability to fart lightning, he thought as he took a seat.
The reports coming from the walls had gotten even stranger over the last month. According to Ren, they still weren’t spirit beasts. Not truly. But they were close. ‘Like a pale imitation of the real thing’ had been her words on the subject, ‘in both strength and majesty.’
Whatever that meant. Either way, the alchemist’s guild were apparently going nuts over the number of reagents they were harvesting from the things. So much so that he’d been half tempted to send out a few of his people on ‘hunting expeditions’ before reality and good sense took over.
Instead, he cleared his throat and looked over the five other people in attendance at this ‘working dinner’. Ren, Elwin, Gao and Lin sat around his command table, with a video feed from An displayed on a monitor on the nearby wall. By this point in time, most of his closest associates had gotten more or less accustomed to his tech, but Elwin was staring in open mouthed astonishment.
“Truly Magister, must you stare so? Have you truly not seen a video before?” Ren smirked from her side of the table as she daintily cut into her meal – as if she hadn’t done exactly the same thing when she’d first seen a similar device.
Elwin colored in a rare show of irritation, but said nothing, which Jack was thankful for.
“So, you say this force is unlikely to hit Jiangshi?” An opened without preamble.
Jack nodded, confirming the information he’d already provided to her in a written report. “At this point, it seems unlikely. Currently, the closest horde seems determined to hug the coast as they make their way towards us, and the other hordes are headed off in entirely different directions.”
An nodded, content with that answer. Unlike Jack, who was… uncomfortable, with relying on reports that were already days out of date by the time they reached the city. Unfortunately for him, with the birds around the city quietly determined to decimate any drone he sent up, he was reduced to relying on information gathered by the Imperial Army.
Namely, mortals on horseback and cultivators using movement techniques who were shadowing the horde as it advanced.
Though that won’t be the case forever, he thought with some vindictive pleasure. Come tomorrow we launch ‘operation sea-mine’.
Said plan likely wouldn’t stop his drones from being destroyed overnight, but it would go some ways towards dissuading the local wildlife from swatting them out of the air at every opportunity.
Or at least, those around the city would be dissuaded.
Flying animals that were further afield from the city would likely be the same airborne menace they always were.
For a solution to that, he had a different plan in mind. One that would take more time to see results.
At the thought, his gaze flitted towards where Lin was partaking of her own meal – something he knew scandalized Ren to no end. According to her, servants weren’t to eat with their betters.
It just wasn’t done.
Elwin, by contrast, was less shocked by the goat woman’s presence. The elf seemed to have taken a shine to the goat-girl - though that didn’t seem to stop her from thinking that the mortal woman was some kind of food taster. One there to detect poisons in the food by consuming it first.
And dying.
…Which said a fair bit about the kind of society she came from in Jack's mind.
Fortunately, he didn’t care what either woman thought. More often than not, Lin was the one who made the food that was served to him, so it seemed only right she got to partake of it with him.
It sure as shit beat eating alone.
Not that he was ever alone. Between An, Ren and now Elwin, he usually had more company than he really cared for.
“We’ve also figured out how they’re moving such a massive army.” Jack continued after taking a sip of water. “The food’s coming to them. In droves. Somehow they’ve figured out how to lure animals to them as they march.”
And not just the terrestrial kind either. A scout had reported a pod of whales literally beaching themselves as the army made camp for the night, which was all kinds of horrifying to Jack’s sensibilities. Not least of all because whales had been extinct on Earth since before he’d been born.
It grated to see them just… giving themselves up to be slaughtered.
“Well, that certainly makes those early reports of this horde being a ‘million’ strong a little more credible.” Elwin sniffed. “Though not by much. I mean, honestly, a million tribesmen? The sheer logistical challenge of having so many people on the march at once boggles the mind.”
An and Ren scowled at the insinuation that reports from the Imperial Army were anything less than spotless, but privately Jack agreed with the elf. A million strong force was a little hard to swallow. Even with ‘magic’ involved. Personally, he thought the real number was likely to be significantly smaller.
Though even if this force was only half the projected number, that was still a rather terrifying number of soldiers. One that still outnumbered the hundred thousand or so warriors within Ten Huo rather handily.
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“One million or half that many, it makes no difference.” Ren shrugged. “They shall break upon the walls of the city.”
Across from her, Gao nodded, and Jack quietly recalled that the man was a native of the city.
Still, they had a point. Apparently, to hear his guard captain talk about it, siege warfare was pretty equivalent to what people had back on Earth during what could roughly be called Earth’s equivalent time period. Honestly, it was worse in some ways, with stuff like trebuchets being totally absent.
Of course, the reason for that became obvious when you thought about it. When you had living breathing people that could act as living battering rams in the form of cultivators, why bother to design equipment that would only be inferior?
Fortunately for the city and everyone in it, the walls of Ten Huo weren’t just thick, they were magically enchanted to protect against cultivator attack.
With that in mind, being outnumbered ten to one was not the death sentence it sounded like. Sure, the situation wasn’t great, far from it, but it was theoretically survivable.
They just needed to outlast their attackers.
So long as the enemy couldn’t breach the walls, Ten Huo just needed to last long enough for reinforcements from the main Imperial army to show up.
“Regardless,” Jack interrupted. “I’d feel happier for every bit of extra assistance I could call upon.”
Across from him, Elwin tittered. “Given what you’re about to say next, should I be insulted?”
Jack ignored her as he turned to An. “To that end, Elwin has agreed to provide Jiangshi with something close to cultivator assistance while she also sets up a school there. Because of that, we don’t need you there to protect against spirit beasts or other cultivators. Given that this city is about to become ground zero for a pretty big fight, I’d like to request that you join us here in Ten Huo, An.”
“Most gracious of me, I know.” The Elf’s eyes twinkled as she looked at him.
It was clear that she was happy. As she should be, given that she was getting exactly what she wanted. Sure, she’d have to wait a few years to ‘cash in’ but given her lifespan, that was but the blink of an eye.
Jack didn’t want to think about it. Instead he turned his attention to the two cultivators present.
Ren’s mood was about what he expected, her expression soured before ultimately becoming resigned to the return of her rival. An’s though? The cat-woman’s face went through a curious mixture of emotions. Happiness, pride and satisfaction, before it slowly morphed into something akin to disappointment before finally settling on embarrassment.
“My apologies Master, but the reclamation efforts here…” She winced. “I do not believe abandoning them now would be wise.”
Jack kept his features carefully neutral. He was well aware of An’s reclamation effort.
Jiangshi now had satellite settlements. Reclaimed villages that held a small force of militia intended to protect the settlers while they rebuilt their homes and harvested the fields. More to the point, she was using some of his machines to build walls for those settlements, turning them into mini-forts.
The end result was that Jiangshi actually had a small ring of forts around it now. Each about a day or so’s travel from the ‘main’ settlement.
To be honest, Jack had thought it simply something An had come up with to stave off boredom in between spirit beast attacks. He certainly wasn’t sure he believed her claims that ‘Jiangshi was running out of room’.
Now though? Now he was wondering if he should look at her census reports a little more closely than he had been.
“You consider your little pet project more important than a command from your lord?” Ren scoffed.
Through the screen, An gave her rival a withering glare before returning her gaze to Jack. “This is an opportunity master, one I believe you foresaw from the very first moment you came across me. Your militia. Your walls. These rifles. How you forced me to watch over them day after day. All of it has culminated in this moment. It shames this An that she took so long to see your goal for what it was.”
She had? He did?
While he was normally perfectly happy to admit to ignorance, in this case he felt it was perhaps better to pretend that whatever An was doing was what he’d planned. From the sounds of things, it just sounded like she was expanding his territory, and he’d never complain about that.
It wasn’t like it would hurt either. Sure, he’d kind of wanted An here for the siege, but realistically it wasn’t like her presence would make much of a difference, not at the kind of scale they were playing at.
So instead he nodded.
“Are all the devices I left you still working?”
A beaming smile stealing over her features, the catgirl nodded eagerly.
“Alright then, I guess I’ll leave you to it my student.” It still felt weird for him to say that, given that he’d taught neither An nor Ren literally anything in the past year.
Yet for some reason, they continued to insist he was their master. Both in a political and teaching sense.
“I guess that’s that then.” He turned to the others. “I think that everything that can be done is being done.”
He’d already set up a production line for landmines of the kind he’d had in Jiangshi. The second crawler was under construction – albeit this time with a flamethrower instead of a cannon. Gao’s sergeants were currently teaching the first batch of the Magistrate’s people how to use their new revolver-rifles. Likewise, the sects had started the process of producing their own musket variants.
Basically, his production capacity was maxed out for the immediate future.
Truth be told, there wasn’t much left for him to do.
Ironically, that means this is probably the best time I’m going to get for some rest and relaxation, he thought as his advisors all stood up to leave.
The only question then, was what could he do to unwind in a city that was running itself ragged in preparation for an invasion of insane animal people?
I suppose I’ll have to think of something, he thought.
-----------------------
When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.
That had been a favored saying of her father, one she had oft heard her father recite in her youth. She had not given it much credence as a young farmer’s daughter and she had given it even less once she became a cultivator.
For she was not grass. She was the elephant.
Or so she had thought.
“So many,” she murmured quietly as she surveyed the hellish scene she had awoken to.
Her head throbbed, a testament to the blow she had taken in the earlier battle, but she gave it no heed as she clumsily levered herself to her feet, careful not to disturb any of the bodies around her.
And there were many.
Mortal. Expert. Instinctive tribesman. Instinctive champion. The walls were covered in the corpses of the fallen, and as she leaned against the inner parapet, she found that the courtyard below was much the same. Attacker and defender, it was easy to see the eddies and swells of the battle in where the corpses were piled and where they were not.
Colorful and scarcely clad instinctive tribesmen where the defenders had rallied. Muted and armored Imperials where the attackers broke through. And through it all, she searched for the… monster.
Yet even the warped form of that… abomination would have been hard to spot amongst the carnage.
The fort was a charnel house.
Though to call it a fort, still, was perhaps a disservice to the squat structure that the place had been but mere hours ago. The place was a burnt-out ruin now, the walls breached in a dozen places, the barracks now a smoldering mess.
Ru had thought the phrase rivers of blood to be an exaggeration. And perhaps it was. Streams of blood seemed more apt. At least on the walls. Pools and puddles of blood were more suited to the courtyard.
She ignored it though, despite the pain in her side and throbbing in her head, she needed to find the monster’s corpse. Or failing that, find someone, anyone, and warn them that it existed.
“Oh, someone’s still alive?”
Ru might have jumped were it not for the fact that her body was long since spent. Yet despite that, despite the bone deep weariness she could feel… some part of her soul seemed to lift at the sound of the stranger’s voice.
Looking up, she spotted a woman perched upon the roof of a nearby guard tower. Svelte and graceful, Ru’s soul seemed to sing at the mere sight of the sitting woman. The gleaming yellow of her eyes. The colorful feathers interspersed through her fiery red hair. The mischievous smirk upon her face. The way she puffed on the small pipe in her hands.
She was beautiful. Ethereally so.
Ru was not a woman who found comfort in the presence of other women, yet if this rooster-woman asked her to be her concubine forever more, Ru believed that in that moment she would have accepted without hesitation.
And her ki…
It was like looking upon a blazing sun, the heat from it so wild and fiery that Ru feared that if it were to turn toward her she would be reduced to little more than cinders.
And she would welcome it, just for an opportunity to bathe in its light for just a moment.
“Divinity,” Ru murmured.
One of the divine ancestors, from which sprung the entirety of the beast-kin race.
Yating, the Laughing Rooster.
The ancestor’s smile only grew and it was all Ru could do not to swoon at the sight. “Ah, it’s good to see that even one of Chelly’s get recognizes me after all these years.”
Almost without thought, Ru’s hands drifted towards her beast-mark, her delicate pink rat-tail. It was strange to hear her own ancestor referred to so… casually.
“Here I was worried all you half-lives would have moved on without me. Short memories and all that. A few generations go by and you lot forget all sorts of things.” Yating continued. “Though, to give you credit, you do sometimes come up with the odd interesting thing or two because of it.”
She smiled. “Cake’s a good example. That’s good stuff. I can still remember when one of my get showed me a cake. I damn near smothered the poor lad.” Her eyes flitted to Ru. “You still have cake don’t you? Didn’t forget it?”
Ru didn’t know what to say, the conversation was so incongruous. “We… we do have cake, great one.”
The woman cackled with genuine joy, as if they weren’t surrounded by the bodies of the dead.
“That’s good. Very good.” As she spoke, her hand came down to rest on the object she was sitting on, and Ru realized for the first time that the ancestor was sitting upon a corpse.
The same corpse she had been searching for mere moments ago.
“Ah,” Yating said, some of her mirth fading. “Though I suppose you half-lives aren’t the only ones capable of coming up with new things. Us old monsters are capable of it too, and the Traitor was always the best of us at it.”
Despite how almost heretical it was, Ru was barely listening. Her focus was entirely on the monstrous mix of… tiger and monkey the woman sat upon. The same abomination that had laughed as it had slain peak cultivators as easily as one might turn over a hand.
“A mix of her own and Murm’s get. And others too I’ll wager.” Yating’s expression was complicated as she looked upon the corpse beneath her. “That’s definitely new. Strong too. For a half-life. And for the life of me I haven’t the foggiest how she achieved it.”
Deliberately, Ru snapped her gaze away from the monster and toward the divine ancestor.
“G-Great one.” She summoned her courage. “Does this mean you are joining the fight?”
To hear it spoken, precious few of the divine ancestors had answered the Empress's call to fight. Though that was not unexpected. The Empress might have been the leader of the Divinities, but she was still ultimately the first amongst equals.
And it had been many years since most of the original twelve had chosen to involve themselves in the affairs of the Empire. Most seemed to have… lost interest in the lives of their short-lived kin.
Which was why Ru’s heart soared as Yating looked to be considering.
“I suppose I might,” the woman scratched her chin. “Originally I was just going to pop in on scales to see where she got off ‘commanding’ me to do anything…” Her attention returned to the horrific abomination beneath her. “Now though… now I’m wondering if it might not be worth taking a moment to catch up first.”