Brock Kowalski finally understood a line he told his English teacher was stupid during a failed attempt to get some understanding of classical literature through his adolescent head; “whom the gods would destroy, they first grant wishes.” All his life he had ignored the bullshit and lies of society. It was all fake. Only strength was real. He had no patience for games, sport was neutered, only battle was real. Modern war was becoming more and more a video game, and less and less about skill and strength. He turned to the martial arts for the truth he sought. He learned karate and kung fu, Brazillian Jiu Jitsu and Escrima. In the end, they were all bullshit. In the ring, in MMA when the sport shackles came off and the violence went offleash, it was all bullshit. All the spirituality, all the philosophy, none of it mattered in the face of explosive violence. Speed and fury were real, strength was real, society, economics, law, morality, it all failed in the face of naked violence. He prayed so hard for a chance for the power of his will and his fury to change the world. Gods above. They gave it to him.
In this world, cultivation ruled. Meditation was not bullshit; it was the key to the universe. Chi flowed through the world, born from its natural laws, which were what Plato would call the Perfect Form of scientific laws, concepts so real they bent reality like a black hole bent space. Meditation allowed you to draw in the chi of this world and bring it into your soul to become mana. Mana could transform your body into a living weapon more powerful than any tank, faster than any car, and eventually able to fly like a plane. Mana could let you punch through three feet of stone with a bare fist simply by purely understanding the proper form of the strike, and filling it with the spiritual power of your unbreakable intent. Mana could let you cut a man in half twenty paces away because your sword strike was such a pure expression of the spirit of the sword that the universe echoed your sword chi like a ripple on a pond and that ripple was strong enough to cut a man in half.
He had become a hero, summoned from his world to this one to save it from the Demon Sui and his forces, and they had given him the truth behind the pale half forgotten legends of the martial arts of his own world. Far from the angry bitter boy who had turned to rage when the promises of his martial dreams turned out to be nothing but hollow lies, he had become a true believer as his first faith was redeemed. The martial arts brought body, mind and spirit together beneath his will and through the arts of his training to make him so much more than any martial art movie out of Hollywood or Hong Kong. It was his dream coming true, and it was not enough.
The scream cut off as the ghoul accepted the sword into its stomach and pulled itself close to the outer disciple to rip open his neck and gulp down trachea and great vessels in a shower of blood. Brock poured out his mana into the fog of William’s cauldron to keep the demon spawned fear from breaking his army’s will to fight, but that left him no more than his superhuman skill and speed to protect these unprepared outer disciples from the horde of the demons. Fighting on the wall meant that none of the corrupted beasts could reach them, only the undead and the forest demons. There were five for each outer disciple on the wall, and they did not care if they died as long as they brought a disciple down first.
Brock’s jumping axe kick took the head off the victorious ghoul, and he bled the torque of his twisting body by scything his jian single handed sword through a talisman bearing lesser vampire. With a roar, he brought a hammer fist down upon the battlements, driving six of the enemy right over the battlements to fall upon countless others climbing the walls. It was not enough. There were three of them on the walls, and William at his cauldron making sure that demonic fear was not going to break the Outer Disciples before battle was even joined. They were just not strong enough. In the inner keep, the inner disciples were each at least six times stronger than the strongest outer disciple, the adepts a dozen times, the masters, two dozen times, and the grand master himself at least a hundred times stronger. Yet they crouched behind wards that blazed like beacons in the night and let the outer disciples die in their place. This was the truth of cultivation.
The strongest walked the path of ascension. The path to immortality. The lesser were doomed to die, it was their place. Why should one who one day expected to unlock eternity risk death to defend some weakling who would be dead anyway in a dozen or a hundred years? What were mortals other than resources to the cultivators? What were the weak to the strong other than expendables? The weak died that the strong should live. The weak toiled that the strong should have leisure to grow stronger. Thus it had always been since the First Emperor plotted the path of ascension for cultivators to follow.
Brock didn’t take up the martial arts in the first place because he wanted to hurt people. Like any child driven to the martial arts, he had always dreamed of being a defender, a protector; respected and admired for his power, not feared by those he protected. He, like all warriors, yearned to seek his place by conquest, to earn his place in battle, to see the respect in the face of those he fought and overcame, to share that joy of a match so close it hung on one mistake, where two foes gave their all to a moment of perfect transcendent beauty written in rage and elemental violence. Now he had become his dream, and it was not enough.
Battle raged for hours, not minutes. He drew in chi with every breath, he felt his mana channels blaze like high tension wires, crackling with power. His limbs moved with explosive speed and dancelike precision, but the outer disciples were lucky if they had reached body like stone, let alone body like iron. They tired, they slowed, and they died. He knew they should be rotating the troops, but the leadership had left the outer wall for the security of the inner keep. They were too important to die. What was left were those who were peasant born, who had made it to the sect through natural gifts and hard work, but who lacked any special constitution or the gifts of noble birth in powerful pills and elixirs to pass their cultivation bottlenecks and advance their development. They were strong in spirit, stronger than their level of cultivation should make possible, but they still sweat, they still bled, their muscles grew stiff and cramped with lactic acid fatigue poisons, their grips slipped, their attention wavered, and the enemy got through. Those he led did not surrender, did not retreat, did even cry out in fear, but stood beside him with nothing but mortal courage. And died.
Andrea Proske had dreamed of rowing in the Olympics, now she was dancing with a Naginata, the same song in her blood that called out the stroke of her scull now swept limbs from ghouls, rammed two feet of steel so filled with metal chi that it cut air molecules as she thrust it into the skull of a human bandit leader who willingly backed the demons in turn for the stolen cultivation resources of the righteous sects they had already taken. She felt the shock through the shaft of the pike as she twisted it free in the same motion she drew her oar free of the water. It was blood not clean water that sleeted from her shaft this day. Taking a deep breath of the fog into her lungs, she exhaled her own mana into it. She could feel the cloud William created with his alchemy leaching the fear from the air.
Smiling softly, she picked up the dropped spear, and put it back in the hands of Outer Disciple who had dropped it. The woman’s fingers were oddly caloused, a harpist’s fingers she realized. Skilled in harp and zither, flute and pipa, yet here she was on the wall of death, while the war masters, her own teachers in the arts of death huddled in the safety of the keep.
Andrea smiled. “Give us a song sister, a harvest song if you have one.” Andrea said gently, then she let her mana fill her voice and let it ring across the battlements. “A harvest song, because we are the reapers and the field is before us!”
She raised her naginata and flicked the blood on it back to the foe who swarmed up the battlements, there were hours until daylight. They needed to pace themselves. A peasant work song, a viking rowing song, both served to keep the stroke for one who must endure the work without failing. If any were to live to the dawn, they would do so because they paced themselves.
The woman was a wonderful musician, if indifferent spearwoman. There were hundreds among her thousand that knew the song, and voices joined it. Sword and axe, spear and bow struck upon the beat and the song echoed to the uncaring heavens in a symphony of blood. Andrea sang, and if any noticed the tears in her face, the spraying blood probably excused it. Of three thousand she had lead, a single thousand remained, and dawn was hours away.
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Serena soared above the battlements. Heart of the Dragon raged in her, and her twin swords were claws of fire that lashed at those who climbed the walls. Her scream of rage reached the clouds and they answered back with lightning, scouring the ground before the walls. Her power bled into the fog like the memory of fire, those beneath her soaring form felt the fear fall away and the rage of the dragon fill them. The undead and the corrupted were driven to the walls and up, and where her disciples met them, they met blade to blade, rage to rage, and the blood poured down the walls to add another treachery to the ascent.
Her entire life she had been trapped inside a body that turned against itself, Muscular Dystrophy had made her weak and clumsy, but she had never bowed before it, never broken. In the cold darkness of her room she wept, but she hated pity more than even her own body. Before the world, she showed nothing but her resolve, and inside her the rage and pride burned. In this world that rage, that pride, learned to cultivate. The body that was her prison and her punishment now bent to her will. She reshaped it with the power of her spirit. She drank in the spirit of the world, and fed it to her rage, and from it flowed power. She had the heart of the dragon. They called it a special constitution, the masters that taught her, but they did not know.
Serena hated life. She hated her life, hated her body, hated those with perfect and obedient bodies. She hated herself even more for hating those who loved and cared for her because the pity in their eyes was the one thing her soul could not take. She had come to this world, and for the first time, she had felt the world embrace her. She drank in life with each breath, and it reshaped her. She felt power, power to destroy, power to compel, power to take what she desired. Yet she felt joy too, joy and a pure connection with the life of this world. The dragon did not despoil the land, nor did it foul the sky. The dragon was the ultimate expression of freedom and power, of life and creation. The dragon loved.
In a dozen years she could cast down this army herself, in a hundred she could blast it aside in a single wave of fire, but tonight, she soared above the walls and tried to hold back the tide with two short swords, and watched it lap at the walls below her, and drag down dozens of her folk with every wave. Serena screamed her rage and dove down to the walls, to meet the foe blade to blade. If she could not stem the tide before it reached her people, then they would reach her people over her dead body. Never had Serena loved life until now, but she had the heart of a dragon, she would die before they reached those she protected.
Spinning low, she cut legs off below shields, then opened her mouth to spit a ball of fire into the face of the demon cresting the ladder, sending him screaming into those beneath him. Thrusting the ladder aside to fall with her crossed swords, she caught sight of the inner keep, its ward sigils blazing, its defensive formations burning brighter than any fire. Inside were those who had taught her cultivation, there were a dozen as strong as her, a handful stronger, and one who could crush her like a child. There were hundreds who each wielded more power than any twenty of her men and women, yet they huddled behind their defenses while the Outer Disciples died. The strong stayed safe, the weak died in their place.
The dragon in her roared, and, unable to reach the Grand Master and his inner disciples, she vented her fury on the army of the unclean that beat itself against the walls of the outer sect, held by those who laboured for the sect, who crafted its wealth, tended its fields, built its defenses, who lived lives of drudgery in return for the instruction of the sect masters, and for the protection of the sects great cultivation masters. The trusting ones who held the wall alone, alone save for four heroes summoned to do what the sects own masters would not risk themselves to do.
William Fitzgerlad’s ebon brow was furrowed, his sweat mixed with the cold fog that poured from his cauldron. He worked his hands to control the fires that blazed beneath it for he could not spare a breath to chant. His fingers flew as they controlled the flame, even as they danced beside him to gather materials to toss in at the precise moment of need. Chi stormed around him, drawn into his cauldron, his alchemist eyes blazed with eldritch light as the elements danced to his will and his design inside his cauldron to weave from the world an answer to the demonic chi. The fog rolled out of his cauldron like the breath of a dragon, and he cultivated at a level his masters would bow their heads to see someone his level achieve. It was not enough to create the fog, he had to fill it with his own spiritual fire, the fire water and earth serving to draw the fear working down into the earth where the wood chi of life would process the bound demonic chi into the elements of life from which it had been twisted.
He stood protected by his three fellow heroes, and thousands of outer sect disciples who were left outside to die while the important and powerful people huddled with their wealth behind their well defended walls. William had been raised among the middle class privileged, but no black man raised in his home ever really was allowed to forget how quickly the line between them and us, between cherished and exploited, was drawn with those who shared his skin on the wrong side. When he was told to huddle behind the walls of the elite while the servants and the craftsmen, the farmers and the workers stood alone against the foe. The hewers of wood, drawers of water, the lower class who served in return for protection would be left outside to die, while he and those like him who were summoned here to become strong, would huddle safe listening to them die.
William was no warrior before coming here. He was an engineer. He needed to understand how things worked. Coming to this world he discovered cultivation, discovered how the natural laws themselves produced the power to manipulate reality. He learned that understanding here was not simply observation, but control. To understand the nature of the fundamental forces of reality was to be able to manipulate them. Mind, body, and spirit could be transformed by understanding, reality reshaped, even immortality was possible if you had the time and resources to chase it. He had been summoned here to be a hero, so every resource was given to him, every teaching was open to him. He became powerful in the way no leader on earth, no athlete, no soldier, and not even Oppenheimer could claim. Then he was asked to huddle in safety while the poor field workers and domestics died screaming.
Perhaps this is what it meant to be a hero. To sit back and let others die for the big picture. Little people, lesser people. Unimportant people. People like he had been on earth. If that was a hero, then he wanted no part of it.
William went to war. With a cauldron, a pot. He poured his learning, his mind and soul into the storm of elements inside his cauldron, to brew a fog that would tear the fear crafted by evil from the world. He had no strength left to defend himself, he had only three friends and thousands of unimportant forgotten people, the rabble, the trash, the outer disciples discarded without thought, to protect him.
He heard a song coming from the walls, and somehow his shoulders relaxed. He only had to hold on until dawn, and no matter how dark it got, the dawn always came.
Demon Sui snarled. He was working through the night to harvest the dead of the battle he had already won. The Imperial Army’s corpses would either become his new undead zombies, lesser vampires, or if they were not intact enough, at least feed his ever hungry ghouls. Fifty thousand dead, at least twenty or thirty thousand new undead would rise this night to join his army! That work proceeded apace, nothing could deny him. Yet half his plan was in busy going to wreckage. His army was to storm the Outer Sect walls like a tidal wave, they were to slaughter the Outer Disciples in sight of the Inner Walls, breaking the will of the powerful cultivators to huddle behind their precious defenses while Demon Sui turned their abandoned Outer Disciples into yet another wave of his own undead army.
Yet they REFUSED to fall!
He had scried the inner councils of that smug Grand Master. He had ordered the Adepts, the Masters, the Inner Disciples, and of course, the irreplaceable heroes, into the safety of their inner walls. There is no way the outer disciples alone could withstand his army! The fear of his demons should leave them unable to even raise a blade in defense. They should be broken, weeping, and kneeling waiting for their throats to be cut, and their bodies turned to his own weapons. They could not possibly be resisting him. It defied reason.
No immortal would risk their lives for their lesser. The strong took, the weak died. From the Gods to the Dragons, from the nobles to the wise, everyone accepted this truth. This was the fundamental truth of cultivation, no one dedicated to the path of ascension would die for a lesser being.
There was a pale violet along the horizon, dawn was hours away, and Blood Mountain was a long march away. The dawn was not here, but if he didn’t get his undead underground before it rose, the purifying light of the holy sun would destroy them. One army was rising from the field of his great victory, but a second was half shattered upon the sect walls, and there would be no replacement this night. Throwing back his head, Demon Sui screamed his rage into the night, and without a word, the demon army abandoned the walls of the Outer Sect. They would return to Blood Mountain to strengthen his newly taken undead to their full power. Once filled with the demonic chi of the corrupted mountain of sacrifice, they would be ready to storm the ramparts of the sect tomorrow night, and wipe out the precious summoned heroes before they could become strong enough to be a threat to him.
Like blood running from a fresh cut throat, his undead army flowed towards Blood Mountain, seeking shelter of its unhallowed ground before the sun rose. There would be another night, and when it fell, no hero would see its dawn.