“Ah, the tales of old—where darkness and light play eternal games, and ‘primevals’ and ‘sentinels’ are but pieces on a stage of fancy. If only sand and ash bore witness to these grand tales, perhaps they'd laugh at the embellishment. We all know who these fables serve, and it isn’t the people of Okkorim. Whatever the Xenoch Council and their disciples may be, they are not walking deities among us. Never let them convince you otherwise.”
— Nazik hazai Baykara, Senmhat Scholar of the Exalted Flame
***
The cavern trembled, dust swirling and rocks falling from above as the mana storm erupted and raged.
Bright, hungry tongues of power swept through the cave, consuming the putrid flesh of the dead Urza before unceremoniously mule kicking Rift in the chest. The blow effortlessly hurled him like a child’s doll from the center of the circle and slammed him into the craggy wall with bone breaking force. Something cracked within his spine and a brilliant lance of pain tore through his back as both of his legs twisted in a direction legs were not supposed to twist.
He landed in a heap, breathing heavily, blood frothing at his lips, as the bottled power finished rampaging through the cave in a maelstrom. That was the thing about mana. It could be wild, unpredictable, and, when not properly controlled, deadly.
The agony in his body was ferocious, like a living and angry thing, but as a Cultivator of blood and flesh and bone he could easily reinforce his body. He focused his mind and fell into a familiar cycling routine—the one that had brought him from lowly Iron to a member of the Peerless.
As he did, the pain faded away until it was only a numb ache, buzzing in the back of his mind like an annoying sandfly. Normally, healing the amount of trauma he’d just suffered would take far more mana than even he could muster, but he happened to be in a cavern filled with a storm of Blood Aspect. Power that he’d already processed and refined once.
He drew it from the air, even as it scoured the walls and destroyed his carefully prepared ritual circle. The mana was a part of him, so he was able to drink it down as easily as a pack of Kenzish sell-swords chugging mulled wine.
There were several pops and cracks as his skin rippled and his bones healed and realigned themselves.
The storm was relatively short-lived, but by the time it had passed, Rift was completely healed, and his core was full to the brim with refined mana once more. He’d never felt better.
At least physically.
As he stood and dusted his palms off, he regarded the ritual circle solemnly.
The voice of his unwelcome traveler fumed in the back of his head, screaming in incoherent rage at the outcome of the ritual. The vile creature who shared Rift’s soul wanted power just as much, if for very different reasons.
As always, Rift suppressed the voice, but he couldn’t so easily shake his own rage. An overwhelming combination of seething frustration and unbridled fury welled up inside his chest. Everything was gone. All of it.
The liquid mana burned to ash. The sacred treasures twisted and broken beyond salvage. The Urza Cores had dissolved, leaving not so much as a trace of mana behind. Even the ritual manual itself was no more than dust. He’d had the wisdom and presence of mind to copy the text and add it to his personal library beforehand, but the destruction of the original was still a tragic loss.
The sect members of the Sanguine Skean would be less than pleased, though that was a worry for another day.
This had always been a possibility, but somehow Rift had convinced himself that this time things would be different. It had taken him the better part of four years to accumulate the items necessary and two more to find an ascension manual that should, in theory, work with his unorthodox and unnatural abilities.
He’d done everything right, yet it still hadn’t been enough.
Rift sighed and let the sharp edge of his anger dull.
Oh well. There’s always tomorrow, he thought.
This setback was devastating. Yet…
Yet, he was a member of the Peerless, and though he walked an Unnamed Path, his body had already been twice remade. He aged at a glacial pace and unless someone or something managed to kill him, time had been stripped of its teeth. Rift would try again and again and again. This wasn’t the first time he’d failed and it likely wouldn’t be the last.
True failure only happened if he quit. Or died.
And until the Imperator lay broken and crushed at his feet, he had no intention of doing either.
With a thought, he extended a whisper of Mana and opened his Dream Vault.
He didn’t want to dirty a new set of clothes, not before he had a chance to bathe and scrape away the dirt and gore, but he needed something to protect against the chill of the desert night. The weather in Okkorim was like a clock pendulum, swinging wildly from one side to the other with the rising and setting of the sun. Days were brutal—a ball of liquid fire above the hard-packed earth and shifting sands below—but the nights were as cold as the days were hot.
He fished out a loose oil-cloth robe and wrapped it around his shoulders, cinching the garment closed at the waist with a length of fabric.
Rift paused as the soft rasp of leather against stone caught his ear and he quickly banished the Dream Vault, preparing to summon his weapons.
He needn’t have bothered.
“It is only me,” a voice said as a man slipped into the opening of the cave, moonlight silhouetting him from behind. Even if he’d been blindfolded, Rift would’ve known the man as surely as he knew his own hand. Taller than Rift and powerfully built, Idwan il Eyuboglu was hard to mistake, especially with his proud, ramrod straight back and the light blue skin which marked him as one of the Muzhry.
Idwan surveyed the bloodshed and utter ruin with pursed lips and an unreadable expression etched into the lines of his hard face. Unreadable to all but Rift, anyway. Idwan was stoic by nature, but Rift could see pain and disappointment where others would see only a façade of uncaring stone.
“Failed?” Idwan asked simply.
Rift nodded.
The blue man—though, in truth, he was sickly pale, his skin covered in a whirl of tightly packed blue tattoos—was quiet for a long thoughtful moment. “Chains will be annoyed,” he finally declared. “Those treasures of yours could’ve kept her in wine and luxury for ten years. Twenty even.”
“And you?” Rift asked, his voice raw and worn thin from exhaustion.
Idwan shrugged, “Zemindek dolu kumlar kaplar, ama aynı zamanda ortaya cıkarlar.”
The words were from the Muzhry tongue, but Rift knew them. The ever-shifting sands bury, but so too do they reveal.
Rift’s people had a similar saying. When one door closes, another opens.
“Sadly, I have worse news for you yet.” Idwan gestured toward the cave entrance. “We have company inbound, from the west.”
Stepping lightly, Rift followed Idwan from the bloody interior of the cave and out onto a rocky ledge bathed in watery moonlight.
Rift had no fear of being spotted by the patrol below. Pressed against the rocky cliff side, he was nothing more than an inky shadow in the night. But the cliffside staircase offered him a commanding view of the village below. A sturdy rock wall, called up from the bones of the earth by a traveling Stone Cultivator encircled a primitive collection of mud huts with flat roofs.
Although the cave system was several hundred feet above Telrala proper, Rift’s senses were a hundred times better than an average man. Even better than Idwan’s, and he was of the Muzhry—desert nomads who trekked the Blighted Lands with impunity.
To Rift’s ears, it was impossible to miss the hiss of scaled thornback mounts or the crunch of wagon wheels over coarse sand. Telrala had visitors, it seemed. At least a dozen of them. That many people, at this time of night, could only mean one of two things.
Either a merchant train had pulled in, or Xenoch bootlickers had come calling.
Considering how far from anything meaningful this backwards village was, Rift had a sinking suspicion it was the latter.
He caught a flash of movement from the corner of his eye—
Chains, the third and final member of their party, was tucked away in a rocky crevice a hundred feet below.
All Rift could see was a sliver of dark brown skin and the glint of starlight reflecting off the hooked edge of her kusarigama—a curved, bladed weapon connected to a long black chain, wrapped loosely around her forearm. The fact that Rift had seen her at all was purely intentional on her part, he was sure.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Once upon a time, the woman had been the best thief in Chentoufi. Before the Stone Skulls had unceremoniously drummed her out, anyway. The woman could be a shadow when she had a mind to.
She was hidden well enough away that those below would never see her, but she was letting Rift know that she was in place and ready to move on his signal. With the unnatural strength and otherworldly grace of a Diamond Envoy of the Unseen Step she could be on the ground in three long bounds. And she’d have blood wetting the edge of her blade before her foot ever touched the sand.
As always, her presence and willingness for total and complete violence was a reassuring comfort.
Rift and the others had left Mahiria months ago and they’d been so careful to mask both their presence in the City of Scholars and their eventual departure. It seemed impossible that the Imperial Wardens could’ve tracked them here, but he could think of no other reason for a patrol to be on the outskirts of Xenoch territory. The people of Telrala had nothing, other than a few grubby farms and a small underground well barely large enough to support their cloistered community.
Even water raiders wouldn’t bother with a place like this.
The land all around Tellrala was dusty, brown, and barren, with the exception of a verdant strip of green which butted up against the cliffs. That was the work of a Cultivator as well—one on a water and life path, who specialized in agriculture.
Most likely a disciple of Imara.
The village wasn’t large enough to have a Cultivator of their own, of course, not even a Steel or low-level Bronze. Cultivators were far too valuable to the Sorcerer-God for that. Usually, dust-speck villages like this were grouped together and put under the protection of one of the many traveling, nomadic sects.
In this case, the Harvestwind Sect, at least according to the elders Rift had talked to.
Those same elders, clad in their finest ceremonial robes, were now assembled out in front of the stone gates, where the column of soldiers lingered.
The troops had dismounted, most standing beside their scaly beasts.
The thornbacks were large, serpentine creatures with six eyes, scales ranging from burnished bronze to cobalt, and all had ornate, bone-like spurs running along their spines. They could move effortlessly across the shifting sands of the Scorch and could survive for days or even weeks without food or water. They were also meaner than the Black Bliss pushers who loitered in the twisted alleyways of the Crutch.
Rift squinted, studying the men more closely.
Each of the scouts wore lamellar armor, composed of overlapping blue metal plates, meticulously connected by reinforced goldsilk cord, and the wide black pants, so common in the capital. Crested helms of blue and gold—the colors of the Jhe’dhari—covered their heads and shifting dreamlace cloaks trailed down their backs.
A pair of officers carried traditional, modestly curved tulwars made from violet prismglass while the rest wielded long-hefted halberds and curved horn bows. Of larger concern to Rift, though, was a man who wore simple leather armor and a black cloak with a golden brooch that looked like an open eye pinned to his chest.
A Watcher of the Blind Father.
Unlike the rest of the troops, the Watcher was also a Cultivator.
Without using his spiritual sense to examine the man, it was impossible to know just how powerful he was. Based on Rift’s extensive experience, however, the most likely prospect was that he was either Obsidian Errant or, at most, a Diamond Envoy—the highest of the Mortal Earth Ranks and a full stage below Rift.
The Peerless were too rare and powerful to waste on chasing down rumors as stale and dry as old bread. But no one was appointed as a Watcher with the Cult of the Blind Fathers without first surpassing the Bronze stage. The Watchers were the not-so-secret spies of the Xenoch Council and served at the pleasure of Archon Katsura, the Grand Spider of the Blind Fathers who also happened to be the Sorcerer-God’s personal spymaster.
Rift had no doubt he could kill the Watcher if it came to a fight.
The difference in raw power between the Peerless and the Diamond Envoys below was almost as great as the difference between the Peerless and Paragons. Even more so in this instance, since Rift was at the peak of his current rank and just one stage removed from advancing. He also had Idwan and Chains in his corner, who were both powerful Diamond Envoys in their own right.
Moreover, the Cult of the Blind Fathers primarily employed those with Mind affinities. They specialized in tracking people, manipulating thought and perception, and sniffing out lies like bloodhounds on a game trail.
Killing the man wouldn’t be a problem. Not even with his entourage of guards in tow.
Killing him without being seen, however…
That was the greater challenge.
Low-tier Watchers, even those of the Diamond Envoy ranks, weren’t all that dangerous to someone like Rift, but everything they saw was, in turn, seen by the high elders of their cursed Sect. To surpass the Mortal Ranks, Cultivators in the Cult of the Blind Fathers voluntarily blinded themselves—gouging out their own eyes—in order to tap into the sight of all those beneath them. If this Watcher got a glimpse of him or the others, it would alert Archon Katsura to his whereabouts.
There could be no worse outcome, save death.
He and Chains had spent the better part of the last year meticulously planting whispered murmurs and laying false trails to slip the Xenoch hounds. If he confronted the man now, it would destroy all of his carefully crafted plans.
Better just to disappear before the Watcher ever caught sight of him.
Rift and the others would scale the cliffs and go east for a few leagues, then double back and head west and eventually north toward Nassir. There were those in the great city of glass smiths who were sympathetic to his cause and situation. And a few more who owed him favors.
There were a few in every city who owed him favors.
Rift faltered when he heard a shriek from below.
He glanced toward the assembled villagers. An elder in finely woven silk robes lay dead, his body crumpled and lifeless, his head four paces away from the stump of his bloody neck. At this distance, even with his eyes, it was impossible to make out which elder had been slain, but Rift suspected it was Elder Ismet—one of the junior members of the village council.
The Watcher stood off to one side, arms folded across his chest, staring down at the butchered corpse without a fleck of pity or remorse.
The Watchers were not well-known for their patience or their graciousness.
To be fair, most Cultivators were fickle and given to violence, but the Watchers made an art form of being offended.
There was no telling what exactly had provoked the man, though in truth it could’ve been any number of things. Perhaps the junior had looked at him wrong or dealt the man some small, perceived slight. Perhaps he hadn’t been quick enough to answer the Watcher’s questions or maybe the Cultivator had sensed the ghost of deception in the man’s words.
Or maybe it was nothing at all.
The Watchers could maim and murder with impunity, as was their right by decree of the Council. The people of Telrala weren’t true citizens of the Empire, after all. They were descendants of the nomadic Sawakin Clans, which meant they had less rights than cattle. The patrol could burn this entire village to the ground, killing every man, woman, and child and face no more than a slap on the wrist, if that.
Life was cheap in the Scorch and strength was the only thing that mattered.
There was another shriek, this time from deeper in the complex of mud huts.
A door swung open and one of the scouts in blue and gold armor strode out, pulling a young girl behind him. She was a slight thing of no more than seven or eight summers, her dark black hair bound into hundreds of small, tightly woven braids in the manner of the Sawakin. She wore a baggy brown sleeping gown, which dangled past her knees, and clutched a small straw doll to her chest.
As she struggled against the man’s steely grip, Rift knew she was crying even though he couldn’t make out the fine details of her face.
They would kill her just as swiftly and mercilessly as they’d killed the headless man, whose body now decorated the hardpan ground.
Rift had seen this tactic many times before.
Given her age, she was likely a granddaughter to one of the more senior village elders. A strong man would stand proud and unbroken, even when an unjust blow fell. But even the strongest of men faltered and bent the knee when a loved one was trotted out before them to be tortured under the unflinching gaze of a Watcher.
Presumably, these men had come to find Rift and the elder would give him up in a second, now that they knew what the cost of protecting him was.
They would betray him, and Rift couldn’t fault them.
True, he’d helped rid them of the nightmarish Urza plaguing their little town, but now his very presence had brought a very different kind of nightmare down upon their heads.
They owed him no loyalty.
Rift owed them none either. They’d paid him for services rendered, and he’d done what they’d asked. Nothing more, nothing less.
Idwan looked between the girl and Rift, his golden eyes troubled. “This isn’t right, Edriah,” the blue man said, using Rift’s given name. “We have incurred Tazimat for bringing this trouble upon them.”
Rift grunted. “We’re mercenaries, Id, not knights. Our obligation is to coin, and we’ve done what we were paid to do.”
This time Idwan snorted and rolled his eyes, the stony façade momentarily broken. “Why must you keep lying to yourself, hmm? You say you are no knight, yet we both know you’re going to go down there and save that child. I wouldn’t travel with you if I didn’t know it to be so in my heart.” He thumped his chest with a closed fist. “There is no need to do this song and dance, when we both already know the tune.”
Rift was silent. Mostly because Idwan was right.
Much as he wanted to, Rift couldn’t take his eyes away from the girl.
What were the chances they would kill her even if the elders cooperated and gave the Watcher exactly what they wanted? He didn’t have to think about the question long. He’d seen enough bloody and senseless massacres to know the answer.
If he did nothing, she would die. That was the cold, hard reality.
With a sigh, he turned away from the cliff face and toward the narrow stairs descending toward the village below. With his reinforced, Twice-Forged body, he could make it down to the gates in less than a minute.
Chains could be quicker.
Kill them, a gruff voice whispered. It was a voice only Rift could hear. Kill them all. Break their bones. Drink their blood.
“Fine,” Rift grumbled, pulling off the oilskin cloak and quickly tossing it into his Dream Vault for later. “I was already in the killing mood.”
“Of course, Bastard Son of Blood and Sand,” Idwan replied seriously, though Rift could see the subtle curl of a smile at the corner of the man’s lips.
Idwan would be insufferable for weeks, but that was just the price he’d have to pay.
With power overrunning his core and spilling through his mana channels, Rift slipped out a small glass blade and slit an incision across the thick line of white scar tissue on his arm.
Blood flowed out, climbing over his arms and shoulders, twisting across his chest and back as his Blood-Bound Hemal Armor formed in moments. It looked like sleek, overlapping plates of hardened red leather that covered every inch of his torso. Curled pauldrons, studded with spits of bone, jutted up from his shoulders while thick vambraces covered in more sharpened chips of gleaming white protected his forearms.
A dark cloak, the color of clotted blood, trailed down his back, moving silently in a breeze that wasn’t there.
The voice in his soul intensified, until it was a roar that drowned out all else. Kill, it demanded, and for once Rift was happy to comply.
Liquid Blood Aspect condensed in his hand, first forming into a short sword, perfect for close combat, or as an assassin’s blade to the kidney. After a moment, Rift shook his head and the weapon shifted, blurring until it became the haft of a spear with a gleaming blade of white on the top.
This had been a night of failures and taking on the patrol below would almost certainly reveal his presence to Archon Katsura, which would set them back by months. In the end, though, time was nothing to Rift. With a little assistance from Chains, he could lay more false trails. Spread more lies and misdirection.
Much as he hated to admit it, Idwan was right about him.
His enemies called him a Bastard and an Outlaw, and maybe he was. But he also wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he walked away and let that little girl below die. Not when he could do something about it. With the feral smile of a hungry jackal, Rift took off at a sprint, blurring down the steps.
This night had been a disappointment, but any night where he got to kill Xenoch dogs couldn’t be all bad…