“Aaaaaargh!”
It was less a scream and more the guttural bellow of a wounded animal as Pan whipped around.
Hell, Jack might have flinched if it weren’t for his suit’s auto-noise canceling and the fact that he’d never really taken his eyes off her at any point. Sure, he’d just point out to everyone in the room why crossing him was a bad idea, but at this point… did Pan really have anything left to lose?
Her life, I guess, he thought. But that was probably measured in hours if not minutes anyway.
Even if Jack had let her live – which he wouldn’t – she’d likely have been finished off by one of the people here in this room. Either as a way of settling old scores, tying up loose ends, or simply out of a misguided attempt to get in good with the ‘new’ Magistrate.
Nah, a last blaze of glory and an attempt at getting even with the one that had undone her was about the best Pan could hope for.
Not that she got far.
Jack barely even saw Shui move. From a kneeling position to standing in moments, the boar-woman beheaded her former ally before she’d moved more than a meter from her chair.
Fortunately, he was far away enough to avoid the spray as the body slid to the floor, the head thunking down mere moments after – and rolling quite a bit further.
It said a lot about the politics of cultivator councils that not a single other member present even twitched. Indeed, most of them barely glanced at the body – their gaze was elsewhere, as if they could peer through the marble and jade walls of the palace to the two smoking craters that now dwelled within the city beyond.
“Was that an attempt to curry favor?” Jack asked quietly to the woman who had once more returned to a kneeling position, her weapon now resheathed.
“Not at all, Magistrate,” Shui spoke with a seriousness quite at odds with her usual jovial attitude. Even from this distance, Jack could see the beads of sweat that had formed on her brow. “It was merely this lowly servant's attempt to rectify some of her earlier foolishness.”
Huh, well at least she was savvy enough to know she wasn’t going to be in his good books anytime soon after this little stunt. At least, outwardly. Truthfully he didn’t really hold Shui’s ambition against her.
That would have been the height of hypocrisy.
Certainly, he’d enjoy her attempts to once more get off his shit list, but he knew she would eventually.
She was just too useful to hold at arm’s length forever.
Besides, now that he was in charge, he had means of ensuring compliance from the council that would have been impossible to implement before.
After all, they’d worked with the gangs in the Sky-Blocks. The only difference here was scale.
And how much explosive charge I’ll have to put into the neck implant, he thought as he pondered how to go about selling the idea. Maybe have it be a choker-collar thing instead of a subdermal chip?
That might work. Hell, he could even make it part of the uniform for government officials.
“So be it,” he said finally. “I can assume then that there will be no more challenges to my ascension as Magistrate?” His eyes panned around the room. “From any member of this council?”
Silence was all the answer he needed. None dared to meet his gaze, and that went double for those few factions that had initially been aligned with Shui. Curiously, the only one who didn’t seem terrified was Ren’s old master, one of the few survivors of the Red Death’s attack and leader of the Jade… something Pavilion.
Which could be either good or bad.
She’s either going to be an asset or a hindrance in the days ahead, he thought as he turned to leave.
“Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some rubble to repurpose.” Jack’s voice echoed through the room as he strode away. “Perhaps I’ll build a public garden? I imagine there’ll be plenty of onsite fertilizer available for me to use.”
----------------
Slowly, Lin took her hands off her control stick and reclined into a chair that was honestly not built for a woman of her rather slight build. It was built for someone significantly larger. Honestly, she’d been meaning to have a more form fitting chair brought in for herself, but at the moment, that thought couldn’t have been further from her mind.
Indeed, the rather cavernous nature of the massive leather and steel construct was somewhat comforting as she brought both her legs up to hug them.
She wouldn’t cry. She was stronger than that.
This wasn’t even the first time she’d killed someone – though whether the Red Death truly counted as a ‘person’ was debatable.
That was still a surreal thought, that she, a nobody peasant from the countryside, had been the one to kill a divinity.
Oh, it had been a group effort assuredly, with Jack rightfully being the one to claim credit for it, but there was no denying that her hand had been the one on the flight stick that had finally slain the beast.
Once the shock had worn off she had celebrated most uproariously afterward. To a degree that would have had her mother and father flushing with shame. A rather large amount of very expensive alcohol had been involved. So much so that she only vaguely recalled being carried to bed afterward.
By a rather large man.
It might have been Jack. She didn’t know.
She hoped it was. It had been… a nice feeling.
She didn’t much feel like celebrating now though.
How many people had she just killed? She didn’t know. Less than a hundred, certainly. Sect arrogance worked in her favor in that regard. Only inner disciples would have dwelled within the compound. Cultivators who had proven both their skills and loyalty to the sect.
She hadn’t killed any mortals… she didn’t think.
Fortunately, she’d only been part of the operation that struck the Silver Paw Sect. Jack had made his own arrangements for the old fort the Imperial Remnant had been occupying.
They would have had mortals with them. A lot of them.
That clearly hadn’t bothered Jack – though, why would it?
He probably dug a tunnel underneath and filled it with explosives, she thought.
That would be a very Jack thing to do. As crude a solution as it was effective.
Hell, the only reason he hadn’t done the same to the Silver Paw was that pretty much every sect had passive defenses against that sort of tunneling attack.
Attacks from the air though?
There was a reason the Magistrate had been so rightly feared by the city’s sects – and it wasn’t entirely down to her skills as a personal combatant. In that regard, Shui might have been the woman’s equal. No, the former Magistrate’s true claim to fame had been her skills as an aerial duelist and her ability to cast down lightning onto the head of anyone that wasn’t an aerial duelist.
Which was a good ninety eight percent of all cultivators. And there was little those cultivators could do against that kind of threat.
Something that had obviously occurred to Jack, given the task he’d given her and their rebuilt drone fleet.
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Carpet bombing, he’d called it.
An apt name, she thought as she gazed up at her screen.
The high definition – whatever that meant – display showed the results of her little bombing run in all its glory. The sect had been leveled, from end to end. Which was to be expected really, when nearly forty drones dropped their explosive payloads at once.
It’s not like we need to worry about them being intercepted by the local wildlife inside the city, she thought.
Or even immediately beyond it, if she were honest. Jack’s explosive balloons had been incredibly effective in culling the local airborne wildlife. Though whether they had simply all been killed off or simply learned to avoid the skies above the city, Lin didn’t know.
With that in mind, Jack had been able to employ his drones in a manner that never would have worked against the Instinctive Horde that had so recently threatened them.
It’s almost funny, I spend all that time learning how to defend the city, she thought. And my second mission is to destroy a part of it.
Jack hadn’t been wrong to pick her for the job – even if he likely hadn’t given it much thought. Which again, was just like Jack. Not that she entirely blamed him for that. He’d spoken of his childhood once or twice, and for all the world that he came from seemed wonderous… it also seemed terrible.
For him, killing wasn’t some hurdle a person needed to struggle to cross. It just was. You killed the other person before they killed you. You didn’t think about it. You just did it.
Or you died, she thought.
She didn’t disagree. Nor was she some quaking waif. She designed weapons. She piloted weapons. She’d once been a candidate to become a cultivator – even if it turned out that she lacked the ki to realize that ambition.
She’d be fine.
For now though… she wanted a minute to herself.
Later, she might get some ice-cream. And some cake. Never mind the ongoing war between Elwin and… Yating over which was the better dessert.
Lin rather liked them together. Hot cake with cold ice-cream.
As she stood up and cracked her back, she supposed she might cry a little too.
In private.
That was also fine.
“Such power.”
The words actually made her jump. Turning, she saw Huang stood behind her. It looked like the woman had been staring at the screen, but now her attention was on Lin.
“My apologies, Lady Lin,” the former Magistrate said slowly, eyes downcast. “I did not mean to startle you.”
Lin regarded the woman across from her. Her slightly hunched posture. The way she averted her gaze. The listlessness of her motions.
She didn’t like it.
While the cultivators in their retinue seemed to have just… written off the woman as someone that had basically ‘died" when she’d given up her powers, Lin still remembered that the Magistrate had done so in defense of the city.
In defense of people like herself.
It felt wrong to see her just… wandering the halls of the compound, bereft of purpose or meaning, practically jumping at every shadow. It was clear that she felt like she didn’t belong. A situation Jack clearly wasn’t helping with by claiming her as his ‘concubine’ and then just… leaving her to her own devices.
She understood why he’d done it. The man had been rushed off his feet in the time following the Red Death’s defeat. First in collecting the dragon’s carcass, then the skyblock’s, and then dealing with the Shui situation.
He’d simply not had time for an Imperial Princess that, to be frank, wasn’t truly important at this juncture and wasn’t going anywhere.
Yet the fact that he’d given her both an escort detail and access to his workshop proved that he did care about her in some small way.
Well, I suppose I’ve just found something more productive to do than sitting around in my room crying, Lin decided.
“Just Lin is fine,” she said. “Would it be ok if I called you… Huang?”
It felt strange, even as she said it. What was she doing? A lowly peasant girl calling an Imperial Princess, a dragon-kin, by name?
The same thought seemed to flash across the other woman’s mind, and a sneer formed, before a thought occurred to her and she seemed to sink even lower.
“That would be… acceptable.” Rather than derisive or resigned, her tone was more hopeful than anything else.
“Great,” Lin cheered, throwing aside her trepidation as she grabbed the startled princess by her arm. “If you liked the drone-monitor, how about I show off some of the other weapons we’ve been working on?”
She didn’t give Huang time to complain as she dragged the woman across the hall and towards the elevator.
The woman’s two militia guards followed hastily after them.
----------------
Gao couldn’t help the complicated emotions that rose up in him as he ran his hand over the pitted surface of a crawler.
It was one of many, arrayed in rows inside one of the warehouses that had been rapidly created with the arrival of Lady An’s army. It was a heady sight. Thirty proud crawlers slumbering after a long march. Part of an army that had clashed with a force numbering near a million-strong – that was admittedly broken and fleeing - and came out the victor.
An had done a tremendous job building her army.
Though I suppose it’s my army now, he mused.
General Gao. It was an absurd rank for a mortal, yet alone a man that had been a mere sergeant a few months previous.
Yet who else could shoulder the burden? Who else had the experience with Lord Jack’s weapons? His strategies?
Certainly, Lady An had done an excellent job forming the ‘Jiangshi relief force’, but it had barely taken Gao a few hours to find the cracks in the organization after their arrival in the city. From supplies to discipline, they were myriad.
The largest though, and from which all others stemmed, was officers. Or a lack thereof. Men with experience leading others. Literate men. Trained men.
Perhaps our lord would allow me to plunder the corps of the Sects with his elevation to Magistrate? He pondered, running a hand along the oddly numb and pockmarked burns on his chin.
His lord had promised healing for those who had been scarred in the attack – and Gao believed him when he said he would find it – but Gao did not yet know if he was worthy of ridding himself of these scars.
He had been at the breach. It had been his command. And though he knew it was ridiculous to blame himself for not being able to challenge the might of a proto-divinity, he nonetheless felt the burden of those deaths.
Of Fanrong’s death – the noble spirit beast having hardened his insides in his final moments to protect his riders. A feat echoed by younger siblings. It had been a hellish experience, akin to cooking inside an oven. And more than one man had perished regardless.
But many had survived. And while not all would return to crew the beasts – the memories of that experience too strong – some would.
And that was enough for Gao.
His hand rested on the leg of the nearest crawler, a small smile sliding over his warped features as he noted the name painted across its shell.
Xiao.
The riders clearly had a sense of humor. It was a small moment of levity, but it lifted his dark mood. He was no cultivator. He would not spend months lost in angst over what might have been.
He had a job to do.
With one final prayer of thanks to the departed, both kin and beast alike, he pushed off the crawler.
“Are you finished, sir?” A nearby man asked, a lieutenant clad in the unmistakable uniform of the ‘rangers’, their mottled green cloaks standing in contrast to his own blue.
Gao had not been entirely sure of these new soldiers. They were unorthodox. They fought in a way that went against all known strategy. They used stealth and subterfuge – nominally the trade of assassins and thieves.
That was why he had seconded a squad of them to his personal guard. To see whether they were an asset to be used or a tumor to be excised.
For the moment though, he had found them to be as professional as any other member of the militia, despite their unorthodox origins.
“I am, let’s-” he started to say, before pausing.
Gunfire. Which was not that odd. They were near the practice range after all. A squat concrete building filled with targets and a dirt backwall intended to catch bullets.
No, what truly caught his ear was the sound of cheering that accompanied it.
“I think I will go see what all the fuss is about,” Gao said.
And put a stop to it if the celebrations were being caused by anything… foolish. Which they probably were. Few things were more creative or destructive than a bored guard. Which was bad in and of itself, but when combined with the myriad of towers Johansen had provided the Jiangshi militia…
Well, Gao found himself hastening his pace slightly as he made his way to the entrance of the firing range, his escorts easily falling in around him as he did.
However, what greeted him once had got inside was not what he had expected. Or ever could have expected.
Lady Huang, former imperial magistrate and imperial princess, stood at the firing line with a revolver pistol in each hand.
As he watched, she threw both into the air, and with her now free hand tossed a dozen bullets up as well. Then, catching each revolver as they came down, she flipped open the cylinders. With a dexterity that was simply inhuman she then had each of the falling bullets fall perfectly into the open chambers.
Roars and cheers came from the watching crowd that were crowded around the area, men and women alike whooping and hollering at the display. None were louder than Lady Lin though, as the goat-kin clapped with ecstatic delight from right next to the former cultivator.
Well, now I know who to blame for this, because that is not proper gun safety, Gao groused internally, though he made no move to stop the show.
Despite himself, he was curious. He had thought that Lady Huang had lost her cultivation?
Yet as he watched, the woman aimed both gonnes – at the ground. Twelve shots rang out in the time it might take a regular man to line up one. And when the final bang stopped echoing off the walls, twelve bullet holes lay in the foreheads of the hay and burlap dummies they used for practice.
No… not twelve, Gao realized. Twenty four.
Which only made sense, she’d been firing before he’d gotten here.
Still, she’d managed to land her second set of shots with such precision that the dummies now all looked like they had a pair of smoking eyes. While ricocheting said shots off the floor.
And, as the blonde woman flipped open her revolver to let the spent rounds slide out, he realized something. She was smiling. For the first time since she’d been brought to his lord’s compound, the former magistrate was smiling as the crowd chanted her name.
And though it stiffened a bit as Lady Lin wrapped the woman in a surprise hug, it did not fade.
He dared to say even grew.
“Should we put a stop to this sir?” The lieutenant asked quietly.
Gao shook his head.
“No, leave it for now,” the general said. “Let them enjoy the show.”
People deserved a moment of levity between the carnage and the blood.
Though he did make sure to grab a copy of the attendance chart for the range as he left. Letting people enjoy a bit of impromptu entertainment was one thing, letting it go unpunished was quite another. The militia members were supposed to use the range for target practice after all, not to watch some kind of… gun show. That they had allowed themselves to be so easily distracted from training by a little fancy shooting was a breakdown in discipline.
Now, should I have them running laps around the building tomorrow or performing weapon maintenance tonight? He ran a hand over his scars contemplatively. Decisions, decisions.