White clouds filled a pristine blue sky, framed in my vision by the edges of the lush forest that bordered the road our wagon traveled along. The view jerked as a wagon wheel struggled over a rough patch of the otherwise packed dirt road. I leaned further back against the rail and took a swig out of the flask cradled against my chest.

“Dash,” a familiar voice said from the other side of the wagon.

With a heavy sigh I took another swig. I’d worked too hard to relax and enjoy the afternoon to let my self-appointed ‘apprentice’ ruin it for me, so I studiously ignored him and kept my eyes on the picturesque sky, letting the rhythmic movements of the wagon lull me into comfortable spot just on the edge of a nap.

“Ardashir!”

“Leave me alone,” I said, or would have said if it hadn’t come out as an incoherent groan.

Something small and hard struck my forehead. I jerked upright and suppressed a yelp as I rubbed my head, less from the pain of whatever hit me and more from the hangover I had been nursing. As I took another swig out of the flask, I cast a glance at my ‘apprentice’ and unwelcome traveling companion, Kan’on, the architect of ruined afternoon naps.

He leaned against the opposite side of the wagon with a serene expression on his face, his sword propped up between his legs and leaning against his chest. His long black hair spilled over his shoulder down to his chest in a messy braid which starkly contrasted with his neat and tidy pastel blue and green combat robes.

I eyeballed the open bag of hard-shelled nuts resting in Kan’on’s lap. My annoyance spiked along with my residual headache.

“What is so depths cursed important that a man can’t rest his eyes for five minutes without some hooligan harassing him?” I snapped.

“Since you were just ‘resting your eyes’, you probably already know that the caravan guard captain is coming up from behind, checking on everybody,” Kan’on said, his tone toeing the bleeding edge of sincerity and sarcasm.

I heard a soft snort from the driver’s seat and looked up to see Jass studiously ignoring us, intently focused on the difficult task of driving the wagon along the perfectly straight and flat forest road, amongst all the other wagons doing the same thing. Jass had already proven himself to be a neutral party though, if not an outright ally against the guard captain and Kan’on.

“You have about thirty seconds before he gets here,” Kan’on continued.

“Of course I knew he was making his rounds,” I lied as I frantically searched the wagon bed for a canteen or waterskin to rinse out my mouth.

Coming up empty, I grabbed my nearby backpack and reached through the opening, but instead of grabbing something in the pack, I tweaked the Flow and let my hand slide into a different space, my ‘cubby’ as I liked to call it, a place out of sync with the world, which had interesting properties. It was one of my better tricks.

I shoved the flask inside and grabbed for one of the waterskins I’d stashed. Taking a big gulp, and another, I swished some water around in my mouth before spitting over the rail onto the road. I focused on the Flow and drew a rune in the air with my finger, the slightly glowing figure hanging there as I completed the simple healing cantrip with a bit of invested willpower and intent.

I stuck my face into the rune and felt warmth travel down my body out to my fingers and toes, like somebody had pulled a blanked over me that had been set to warm by the hearth. Just in time, I heard the clomping of horse hooves approaching and peeked over the rail to see Clyde Courtenay sidling up.

The man was outfitted in a set of expensive plate armor, polished with such intensity that even a blind person couldn’t help but notice him trotting down the road. My eye twitched as the details came into focus; etchings of mythical creatures, copious amounts of gold gilding and silver trim, in short a gaudy monstrosity.

The armor wasn’t Clyde’s only means of compensating for his insecurities. His attitude mirrored how he thought a nobleman would behave, just without the land, looks, or charm to back it up. The Courtenay family’s roots stretched back many hundreds of years, their wealth and influence known far and wide. Clyde had none of it, the unwanted bastard. They even saddled him with the name Clyde, a cloddish name by noble standards. I couldn’t help but snort at the absurdity of the man.

“Dash, by the Deep Gods, I can smell the alcohol from here.” Clyde leaned over and inspected me, looking for any sign of drink. “You’re a cursed mess! Your hair is a rat’s nest. Your clothes are older and rattier than the Deep Father. I can’t even imagine the condition of that weapon you keep wrapped up,” he said while gesturing at my nearby sword. “Just as well. I can’t stand a man who can’t keep a weapon conditioned.”

“I prefer the term ‘comfortable’, not ratty, thank you very much. My hair is ‘stylish’ too, for someone my age.”

“Don’t get mouthy. I haven’t forgotten the alcohol. I don’t know how many times I’ve searched you, but I’ll find it eventually, and if I find you drunk on duty again, on my house’s name I’ll throw you out on your ass so fast that the deep ones themselves wouldn’t be able to keep up. The only reason I keep you on at all is because your partner here makes up for everything you lack, and then some.” Without waiting for my reply, Clyde urged his horse on and rode further up the line.

“’On my name…’”, I mimicked with an exaggerated nasally voice. “That man’s family would disown him if he tried to use their name to so much as buy a beer in a back-alley tavern.” I saw Kan’on smirk, no doubt enjoying my haranguing by Clyde, and I rolled my eyes.

I settled down against the wagon rail again, desperately attempting to regain the sense of tranquility I’d attained before the interruption, but it was too late. The healing rune had removed both the hangover and the nice buzz, leaving only echoes of travel aches and pains, and… old memories.

The wagon continued to rumble down the road, the only other sounds coming from the caravan and the wagon, supported by Jass’s quiet humming. I stretched my senses to listen to the comforting sounds of the forest. Maybe it was the time of day or the passing caravan, but not a single chirp of a bird reached my ears. Kan’on once again interrupted my reverie.

“What you do… it’s impossible,” Kan’on said. “I know for a fact that there were no waterskins in that backpack. And that healing rune you made… with how sloppy and hasty it was, not to mention incomplete, it should have collapsed and done nothing but sparkle. The magic just shouldn’t work, and I’m fairly powerful in my own right, I would know.”

Snorting, I wrenched myself into a semblance of the posture my tutors had beaten into me during my childhood. “You cultivators, always too busy looking down your long noses at everybody to realize that your way isn’t the only way to do things. That Grandmaster of yours, that old meddler, sent you to chase me down and you have the gall to try to tell me what’s impossible or not.”

“I’m not as sheltered as you believe me to be. I’ve seen a fair bit of the world. If I’m to be Grandmaster’s successor, I need to know about the world. And I’m telling you, I’ve never seen anything like what you do.”

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I sighed, then peeked over the railing, checking up and down the road for any sign of Clyde or his lackeys before I reached into my vest, using it to hide my disappearing hand as it slipped into my cubby for one of many flasks I kept there. Uncorking it, I took a long pull, letting the alcohol burn its way down my throat and settle into a warm glow in my stomach. With a satisfied sigh, I focused on my ‘apprentice’.

Kan’on, chosen successor to the Skyreach Pinnacle sect. ‘Sect’, just a fancy term for snobby knowledge hoarding if you asked me. That being said, he fought better with the sword than I did. His magic was more overtly powerful than mine too. The issue was that he approached every problem too conventionally. He lacked subtlety and nuance. I blamed the sects for that. They were nothing if not adherents to their own centuries old traditions, which made them dangerous and powerful in many ways, but in others completely blind.

“You have seen it, you just don’t know when you’re looking at it,” I said. “Back when men and the other races were still stumbling around in the woods clubbing each other with sticks and being eaten by beasts from the Labyrinth, people of magic practiced the old ways, or the deep ways, depending on who you ask.”

“The Flow,” said Kan’on. “I’ve heard you say it before, but you never really told me what it is, which is funny because the Grandmaster did send me to learn from you.”

“Hey, I never agreed to anything, and the old man can go rot for all I care.” That wasn’t true, of course. I owed him a few favors, to say the least. I grunted, settling back down into a comfortable slouch. Well, nothing for it. The quickest way to get rid of Kan’on was to do what the old man wanted.

“The Flow… it’s energy, but with purpose and it connects everything to everything else. I don’t know this for sure, but all magic comes from The Flow, even if you don’t realize it. In the old times, things like faith, shared beliefs, and rituals could create magic through collective willpower and intent. They didn’t know why it worked; it just did. Over time other traditions formed with runes and glyphs where everyone believed they did certain things, and they do because everyone believes they do. It’s a self-fulfilling delusion. Humanity created a magical language based entirely on a shared delusion. All that structure has limitations, however.”

I paused to take another surreptitious swig from my flask. Talking about the Flow brought out painful memories, vivid visions of my big mistake. I grimaced and took another pull for good measure before reaching into my robe and twisting the Flow to open the tricky space to the cubby to deposit the flask.

“So it’s something you see?” asked Kan’on. His serene expressed had slipped and a sliver of his true personality poked through, intense curiosity and focus.

“Yes. No. Sort of. It’s kind of its own thing. You don’t need to sense it directly to use it is the point, though. You just need to know it’s there.”

“Is this what the Grandmaster sent me to learn then? To see the Flow? Will I be able to do the things you can?”

I had my doubts about why that geezer had sent his best student. Simply put, Kan’on didn’t need it. He was already a powerhouse. If a ranking existed for most powerful warriors and magicians, he would rank somewhere near the top of the list. What point would there be in learning something like this now, unless the Grandmaster thought Kan’on lacked something specific, which gave me an idea.

“To arms! To arms!” Shouts rang out from further up the line of wagons. Faint sounds of fighting filtered back through the caravan. Jass reined in the animals and the wagon jolted to a stop.

I grabbed my wrapped-up sword and got to my feet, shading my eyes from the afternoon sun as I tried to spot the ruckus. Something else caught my attention though, as the currents of the Flow around the nearby tree line swelled faintly, pushing the current toward the road.

“Well, Clyde isn’t as dumb and paranoid as I thought. Get ready, something approaches.”

“I heard from Jass that this area is crawling with Ilfids.”

“Bugs then eh. Well, they’re not usually overtly hostile. Mostly.”

“That’s racist.”

“I’ll care when they stop taking human slaves and eating human carcasses.”

“That’s fair, though I have to point out that there are Ilfid enclaves that are perfectly civilized, just not around here.”

Kan’on jumped down from the wagon and walked toward the tree line, stationing himself between the forest and the wagon. I had no problem letting him handle the the brunt of an attack, if it came to their little corner of the caravan. Ilfid were as much a threat to him as your run of the mill house cat.

I picked up my sword, still in its grey wrappings, and stood on the driver seat next to Jass. “Don’t worry, Jass. You just stay put and keep that spear handy just in case.” He just nodded, apparently an old hand at this sort of thing.

From my vantage point standing on the wagon, I saw caravan guards up and down the line popping out of the woodwork, taking up positions and readying themselves for the inevitable rush of enemies. The Ilfid weren’t known for their intricate battle tactics, after all.

Soon enough, Ilfid poured from the edge of the forest up and down the road. They had covered themselves in ill-fitting armor that they most likely looted from other raids, but the mud-colored chitinous plates covering their bodies provided most of their protection. Each had between four and six arms and long antenna sprouted from their heads above multifaceted eyes. They each carried weapons of sorts, but with Ilfid it was the jaws and the immensely powerful pincers that one needed to worry about. These were workers then, the lowest Ilfid caste.

Kan’on drew his sword, a long, thin silver ribbon that gleamed in the afternoon light, and took a ready stance. A faint aura leaked from his tensed muscles as he waited, taught like a bowstring waiting to be loosed. At some unknown signal, he flew forward, sword flashing, dancing through the charging pack of Ilfid in an instant.

I laughed and shook my head. Cultivators always treated fighting like one of those dramatic plays that were popular in the capital. Using battle aura in a fight like this… I bet he used a sledge hammer to tenderize his steaks as well.

I kept watch up and down my section of the caravan line. I focused my senses and the sounds of battle filtered to me as a cacophonous melody, carried by the Flow. Few things were as beautiful as the Flow during a battle, or as sad. Each death was a blooming flower of released potential, greedily sucked up by the nearby currents and gifted back to the world.

While Kan’on dramatically chased another group of Ilfid further down the line, a pair of workers rushed out of the forest toward the next wagon forward. I grunted in annoyance; so much for taking it easy while Kan’on did the work. I watched the Ilfid run toward the next wagon up in line from my own, gaging the timing of thier arrival.

I crouched, augmenting my strength with a small portion of power, and leapt. Soaring sedately into the air, I let my arc reach its peak where I reached out and touched the Flow, imparting intent and willpower and a gift of my power. The currents connecting me to the next wagon driver grabbed me and carried me the rest of the thirty-foot jump and I landed lightly on my toes.

I drew an abbreviated rune in the air, connected it to the Flow with my intent and willpower to make up the difference in empowerment, and swung the still-wrapped tip of my sword through it and tapped the first Ilfid worker on the head just as it reached the edge of the wagon.

An invisible force flattened the Ilfid to the ground, as if a giant hammer had reached out and crushed it. The second worker stumbled over the broken body of its fellow and barreled into the side of the wagon.

I quickly drew another rune, empowered it, and swing my sword through it like a club, connecting with the worker’s torso as he backpedaled away from its impact with the wagon. My blow sent it flying back into the trees, only the sound of a body crashing through the undergrowth giving evidence that it had ever been there at all.

I mentally kicked myself. I had just been lambasting Kan’on for showing off and here I was empowering runes on the fly like I was trying to impress a girl in the village green. I turned and made my way back to my wagon and plopped down next to Jass, disgusted with myself. Jass, ever the sympathetic companion, just patted me on the back.

Kan’on still flashed in and out of view, his sword a shimmering ribbon of light that left dismembered body parts and gushing blood in its wake. The blue and green pastels of his outfit in this light painted a beautiful image as he flashed around, paired with his pretty face and hair, dashing around dashingly… it was enough to make me sick.

A wave in the Flow caught my attention; there was something more interesting than the Ilfid worker fodder making its way through the forest. It was big.

“Careful Jass, something dangerous is coming.” I jumped down from my perch and walked to the edge of the road.

Trees and undergrowth cracked and crashed as an enormous Ilfid emerged from the woods, easily twice as tall as a man, both arms as thick as a log. It let out a piercing screech that sent defenders up and down the line to their knees, grasping their heads in pain.

Yes, an Ilfid Brute was far more interesting. They had finally sent one of their true warrior caste. I reached into my cubby and took out a flask and took a long, hard pull that emptied it out.