Juri tasted blood. The blow had connected solidly to his jaw and he’d cut the inside of his cheek against his teeth. But he didn’t have time to consider that as he was up against the wall with his two opponents pinning him. The large man was preparing for another strike to his face, while the smaller one was going for his solar plexus. Juri decided not to be there when they connected, rolling out to the side. He still caught a glancing blow to the hip, but it was just one of many since the melee had begun.
Of the fifteen men that had started the brawl, only three remained. Juri hadn’t realized when he’d agreed to bet three weeks pay on the outcome of the fight that most of the combatants knew each other, and already had established alliances and rivalries. Five of the men had ganged up on him right from the start, though that had been a mistake, as only three of them had been Awakened, and none had even passed the first reformation.
These two, however, they were a threat. He had a hard time imagining them passing the second Reformation, but they were punching like they were at the third, and they were quite determined to take him out of the competition.
The smaller man jumped on his back as he rolled and began kneeing Juri in the kidney while attempting to strangle him from behind. Juri responded by slamming against the wall with his full weight, attempting to knock the man loose.
He saw the big guy coming just before he committed to the third slam just in time to spin and use his passenger as a shield against the man’s wild haymaker. That worked where the body slams had failed, knocking the smaller opponent off of his back and into the dreamworld.
Juri grinned, confident now that he was one on one with the big man. After all, he was a big man himself, and while his opponent had raw strength, Juri had been trained by the Orders and by the Whisperers. Even before leaving home, however, fighting was just one thing he was good at.
Even when he had to hide just how good he really was. The whisperers had spent months training him to fight while appearing to have no official training at all.
Which is why he allowed half of the big man’s wild punches to connect rather than block or dodge them, as he easily could have done. He returned them in equal measure, putting all of his significant muscle and ki into each blow. The big man began to waver after a few exchanges, then he coughed, spat up phlegm mixed with blood, and fell to his knees and holding his hands up in surrender.
The crowd cheered and jeered at his victory depending upon how they had bet. He was a relative unknown, which meant that most of them were jeering as they had bet upon their favorites. Only a few had ventured to place coin upon Juri, but those that had were cheering loud enough to be heard over those who had lost their bets.
He spat into the dirt, barely missing one of the unconscious combatants. Some of the onlookers seemed to think that the prone man had been his target and they jeered louder. Juri ignored them. He stepped out of the ring, and went to collect his coin.
The drinks were being served off of a cart, and Ovuz handed him a towel and a glass of dark liquid when he approached. Juri used one and then the other, wincing as the sharp bite of whiskey burned all the way down.
“Pretty good, kid. You helped me make a lot of money just now,” Ovuz informed him. “Wasn’t expecting you to win, but when nobody bets on the underdog and the underdog wins it all, the house wins the most.”
“I just want my cut,” Juri reminded him.
“Afraid it’s not quite that simple,” Ovuz said sadly.
“I want my cut, dammit. Don’t go trying to cheat me--”
“Oh, I’ll pay you the thirty pennies you bet on yourself alright. Comes out to a ren and a half it does,” Ovuz agreed.
“The pot was twenty ren,” Juri glowered.
“That it was. And I’ll be paying it to your master in the morning,” Ovuz agreed cheerfully. “After all, your labors belong to him for the next five years, do they not? Quite wise of him to see the talent you had with your fists and turn you into a --”
“You goddamn cheat,” Juri shouted. “I need that coin!”
Ovuz grinned at him and shrugged. “Everyone needs coin. Slaves most of all. Were you thinking that buying off your contract would be that easy? I had to get your master’s approval before I could enter you into the fight. And because he entered you into the fight, he earns your winnings. Except of course for the wages you gambled upon yourself. Those are yours to keep.”
Juri shouted in frustration and threw the mug hard enough that the sturdy clay shattered against a boulder. “You think I’m just going to let you get away with cheating me you son of a--”
The aura of a fifth Reformation Master slammed into him, causing him to gasp as he brought his own aura up against it.
“I don’t see that you have much choice in the matter,” Ovuz said cheerfully. “Considering that I’m simply following the law.”
Juri frowned. He’d known that Ovuz was a cultivator, but not that he was this strong. He could continue to play hard-headed and challenge the man despite it, but he’d taken enough of a beating already this evening and didn’t much anticipate the spectacle he’d provide the jeering crowd by getting his teeth kicked in by someone much stronger than he was.
“You think you’ll ever get me to fight for you again, now?” he challenged. “Think again.”
“Oh, I think you and I have a very long future together, Juri,” Ovuz said with a grin. “Once I purchase you from your Master, that is. But don’t worry, I take good care of my prize fighters. Keep winning, and I’ll shower you with drinks and women. Just not very much coin. The coin is mine.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~
“This is as far as I will take you,” the monk said. He motioned to the path leading up the mountain. “There is a temple up there. That is your destination. Speak with the priest, and he will guide you.”
“He’s not going to attack me for no reason like you did, is he?” Baturya asked.
“Many things in this world are possible,” the monk admitted. He sighed, and pulled from his robe a small bracelet of prayer beads. “Show him this. He will know that I sent you. It should prevent any confusion.”
“Why not join us?” Gyre asked.
“The priest and I have different beliefs in theology. We do not get along,” the monk admitted. “But he is more tolerant of the unorthodox than I am. If he sees that I have extended my tolerance, it is most likely that he will do the same. I will wait for you at the base of the mountain.”
“But you don’t know,” Baturya realized. “You’ve led us all this way and you don’t know that going up these stairs isn’t going to get me killed, and you don’t care, do you?”
“If I wanted you dead, boy, you’d be dead,” the monk said sharply. “But the first thing you should learn about those who cast off mortality is that none of us speak with the same voice. I cannot say for certain how the priest will receive you, but I do not believe that his first instinct will be to harm you. If I did, I would find another guide for you to find a mast—teacher.”
“So it’s not even the priest I’m meant to find?” Baturya asked, sounding frustrated. “Why are we even here?”
“Because the priest is the only one who knows which peak the unorthodox master I am thinking of calls home,” the monk explained. “All I know is that he is probably within fifty miles of this temple. That is a very large area, would you not rather narrow the search?”
Baturya grunted in dissatisfaction, but had no argument. Leaving the monk behind, his party proceeded upon the mountain path.
The temple not far up the slope. The gate was open to welcome them, but the temple itself was empty, save for the statues. Motifs of lupine figures ran throughout the temple, with a pair of men with wolf heads guarding the entrance to the temple. The rest of the statues were more correctly quadrupeds, although they ranged in size from normal to larger than the horses.
The temple had an air of dishevelment. Debris and rotten leaves were strewn about the yard, and the exterior was covered in dust. The party passed between the two wolf-men and entered the temple to find that the interior walls were decorated with murals and paintings of wolves.
“What god takes a wolf form?” Baturya asked his companions.
“Silvas does sometimes, I think,” Jazirqe supplied.
“I wasn’t asking you,” Baturya said, glaring at the unwelcome tag-along. “I still wish you weren’t following us. Why are you following us again? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“That’s some gratitude considering I saved your life last week,” she reminded him. “The monk would have killed you had I not intervened.”
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“You don’t know that,” Baturya protested.
“Stop being a rockhead, Baturya,” Ita scolded. “You have been like a little child lately. What is wrong with you?”
“Nothing is wrong with me. I was just attacked by an immortal monk for the crime of existing and then I was told that I’m guilty of some terrible thing just for surviving an murder attempt. Now I’m told that I have to find a priest who will probably try to kill me as well for the same crime, but maybe instead he’ll send me to someone who might be able to help me fix my aura. Maybe,” Baturya said. “Other than all of that I’m doing just fine.”
“You should maybe not talk about such things out of context until we know nobody is listening,” Gyre suggested. “I’d prefer it if we could get help from the priest of the temple without him getting the wrong idea. Especially if he’s as powerful as our previous guide.”
“Yes, it’s a very bad idea to get on the wrong side of a water walker,” Ita agreed. “Father’s wrath is something terrible to behold, and I do not think any other water walker is less so. When he challenged us, the monk put great effort in preventing the rest of us from interfering. I do not doubt that he could have used that effort to smite you in an instant instead.”
“Wonderful, thanks for telling me that, Ita,” Baturya said insincerely. “That makes me feel so much better about meeting another stranger who can probably do the same thing.”
“And why would I do that?” a voice asked from behind them. Half of the party jumped to find that one of the statues they had walked past had come to life. Or rather, what they had taken for a statue was a man wearing a headdress. Now that he had revealed himself, Baturya wondered how they could have ever been fooled, for although he was as dirty and disheveled as the rest of the temple, he was clearly flesh and blood, not solid stone as the other statues were.
“Are you a priest of Silvas?” Baturya demanded.
“Do not profane this holy place with the name of that pretender,” the stranger said. “She is a hundred thousand years younger than the god I serve. The god I serve has been hunting beneath the moons since before man mastered the craft of fire making and stone tools. I am Debal, priest of Ujugal, god of the hunt.”
The party exchanged confused glances.
“Never heard of him,” Baturya admitted.
“Her, dammit!”
“You said … never mind. I’m supposed to show you this,” Baturya said, producing the prayer beads from his pocket. Debal snatched them away and held them some distance away from his masked face.
“That old fool refused to give you a name, didn’t he?” Debal asked.
“He’s a mendicant. They leave their names behind when they take their oaths,” Gyre stated. “Individuality gets in the way of their service to the divine.”
“That’s a very young twist on a very old tradition,” Debal stated. “They are supposed to take up new names to mark the beginning of their new lives. That old fool is the one who broke the tradition with his stubbornness, and now all of the monks are copying him. What does that old fool want from me now? It has been a thousand lunar cycles since he last bothered me, and I would have preferred a thousand more.”
“What would you do if an unorthodox practitioner revealed themselves to you?” Baturya inquired.
“I would probably ask them to put it away because I don’t particularly want to see that sort of thing,” the priest answered.
“That’s not what I meant,” Baturya said, flushing. “I mean, would you attack them for stepping off the orthodox path?”
“Ujugal is a very old goddess. She precedes the creation of the orthodoxy and views all else as part of the natural order of things,” Debal answered simply. “Once, we were all hunters with sharp fangs and claws, and the only laws were eat or be eaten. It is the new gods who have tamed the world and insisted upon pampering the weak while the strong hide in the shadows. The old fool believes in these new days. I care for them very little.”
“Are you unorthodox, then?” Baturya asked.
Debal snorted. “Only a fool would walk that path willingly. The broken path is for those who seek power before wisdom. I am not a fool, and I was patient. I came into my power in my own time.”
Baturya flushed. “What if they had no other choice? What if it was die or step off the path?”
Debal cocked his head, considering. “Accepting death when it is inevitable is a sort of wisdom of itself. But if there is an alternative, then the wise course is to seek it out.”
“That was the choice I faced two years ago, when I was mortally injured. My core was infused with killing intent, and a massive amount of foreign ki was injected into my channels. I was forced into the fifth reformation before my time, and my ki remains polluted. I am unable to cleanse it, despite years of trying,” Baturya explained. “The monk who guided us here thought you could help.”
“Is that all?” the priest asked, cocking his head to the other side, the wolf-mask looking like a dog who had heard something curious. “You are alive. I do not see the problem.”
“The problem is that I wish to cleanse my ki and return to the orthodox path,” Baturya explained, growing frustrated. “Can you help or not?”
“Not,” the priest admitted. “I do not know why that old fool of a monk would think that I could. I live to worship the moon goddess, and to hunt in the night. I am not a priest who cleanses or blesses.”
“That is because Rockhead is asking the wrong question,” Ita said impatiently. “The monk said not that you would be the one to help him, but that you would know where one who could help was.”
“Oh?” the priest cocked his head to the other side as he considered. “Perhaps one of them might be able to help? It is hard to say what they would do if they met a worthy hunter. But you must prove yourself worthy. Are you willing?”
“Just tell me where they are,” Baturya said, exasperated. “I’ll pass whatever test they ask of me.”
“No. First, I require payment of my own before I will answer that question,” Debal said, crossing his arms sternly.
“We have coin, how much do you want?” Baturya asked.
“Coin is worthless to me. I would have you honor the goddess,” Debal said. “Her temple has fallen into disrepair. Clean what is dirty, and fix what is broken. Only then will I reveal the path to the ones who might help you.”
“What?” Baturya asked. “Isn’t that your job?”
Debal scoffed. “Such menial tasks are below the high priest of Ujugal! Unfortunately the novice priest who used to handle this sort of thing has died of old age recently, and I’ve yet to convert more followers. It is good that you happened along at this time, as the conversion process is rather annoying. What with the supplicants constantly running away, forcing me to hunt them down and drag them back until they agree to worship properly.”
“You just kidnap villagers, don’t you?” Baturya asked. “That’s why nobody lives nearby.”
“I summon them to a higher purpose,” Debal corrected. “It takes time for a supplicant to understand the glory of the goddess.”
“We don’t have time for this. Clean your own temple,” Baturya complained.
“I’m afraid I must insist. I will not allow you to leave until you comply,” the masked man stated.
Baturya glanced to his side, and a smirk formed on his lips as a solution occurred to him. “I have a better idea,” he said, grabbing Shaji by the shoulder. “Debal, meet your newest novice priest of Ujugal!”
“What?!” Shaji squawked.
Debal scratched under his mask for a moment as he considered. “You would give me a slave as an offering?”
“You’re not going to hurt him, are you?” Baturya asked. “I mean, you just need him to clean the temple, right? You’re not going to sacrifice him in some blood ritual?”
“Ujugal is goddess of the hunt! To sacrifice a tame animal to her is blasphemy! Only a pure hunt of one born and raised to the wild will appease her,” Debal exclaimed.
“Then I really don’t have any problem giving him to you,” Baturya admitted.
“Baty, no, please don’t,” Shaji objected. “We’re supposed to go home after this!”
“It’s better than a mine, Shaji. All you have to do is maintain the temple. It should be easy work,” Baturya said. “Honestly it solves a lot of problems for both of us. You have a place to belong, and I’m no longer responsible for you. It’s a perfect fit for everybody.”
“But my family--”
“Your family doesn’t want you back, Shaji,” Baturya said sternly. “I tried to convince them for two years to take you off my hands. I’m done with it. Do you even realize how much I hate the fact that I own you? Or that I own ten years of your life, at least? I suppose I should tell you that, Debal. Shaji’s contract only goes for another ten years, and I’m supposed to pay him at least a penny a day for any day he works more than five hours for me. After that, according to the law, he is a free man, entitled to at least two sets of clothing and whatever savings he managed to acquire from his slave wages.”
“He’ll never let me go, Baty,” Shaji complained. “You heard him, the last guy died of old age! I don’t want to be stuck in this temple for the rest of my life!”
“If you pledge to serve willingly for ten years, then I shall permit you to leave with a sum of twenty ren,” Debal declared. “Although I will deduct one ren for every time you attempt to escape. In the interim, you shall be kept healthy and fed well. Is that an acceptable contract?”
“It sounds fine to me,” Baty agreed. “Back home Shaji was spending all of his coin on letters and trivialities.”
“Baty, please, don’t just give me away like this,” Shaji protested. “You don’t even know--”
“You will serve the goddess, boy,” Debal decided. “Either you shall clean her temple for her, or you shall serve as amusement while she waits for one who will. Unorthodox boy, your offering is accepted. The ones you seek are to the northwest at present. Leave your horses and companions behind, they will only hinder you. The one you seek will hide from any but a lone hunter. You must undergo a personal trial in order to earn their respect; you must claim the fang of a dire wolf. Follow the howling wind. Once you have proven your worth, they will seek you out.”
With that, the priest of Ujugal grabbed Shaji by the wrist and dragged him deeper into the temple. The sixteen year old shouted and begged for Baturya to reconsider, but the companions were already turning to leave.
“You realize this means we must care for the horses ourselves now, do you not?” Ita asked as they departed.
“It’ll be fine,” Baturya insisted. “I’m just glad to be rid of him.”
~~~~~~~~~