59. Grief

I sat on the top of my mountain, at the spot where I had killed Hien Ro, and I looked at the bloodstain that was not there. That would never be there, because in a split second I had made two decisions at once.

The decision to kill my disciples.

And the decision to spare them.

I had made those decisions with equal determination and certainty.

For twenty miles, the world had split in two as my disciples, my friends, had fought for survival against the master, the friend who had betrayed them.

In one reality, at least.

The amount of work that I had put forth into this graduation test was staggering. I had been preparing for it since we had arrived on the mountain. Seven months to the outside world, three years for my true body. A decade for Polkluk, who was now the oldest of my disciples.

If you counted the time that I had spent living through my avatars, then I had spent almost a century training my disciples.

And I had committed myself to murdering one of them. I hadn’t known which it would be, only that I would slay one of them and then activate the formation to return their memories to immediately before the battle began.

That it had been Hien Ro was …

I closed my eyes, feeling the moisture well up and drift down my cheeks.

Because in a week, I would do it again. Except I would not stop at one disciple. I would keep going until I had slain them all.

And they would not be able to stop me.

In the silence on the mountaintop, with the air thin and still around me, I wept.

~~~~~~

Hien Ro sat in the bath. Lukal Lukal was there with him, as was Polkluk. They had refused to leave him alone, and anyway the entire group of males in the cohort had taken to bathing together after their training exercises so this was normal for them.

Except that everything was different.

He felt his chest, where the hole had been. There was nothing there except for what was supposed to be there. But yet he had felt his heart be destroyed, he had felt his soul leave his body.

He had seen the light, and he had gone towards it and … and …

He did not remember what happened after that. But he had not simply rewound and found himself back in his old body, before the battle had happened. He felt older. Wiser than he had been before.

And yet traumatized in a way that was impossible to explain.

He dunked his head beneath the water, holding his breath until he had to come up for air. He was a cultivator of the late bronze path, so this was some time.

When he finally stood up, he reached for a towel. “I need to see him.”

“I’m not certain that’s a good idea,” Polkluk said. “What if he—”

“I know him best. He won’t,” Hien Ro said. He quickly dried himself and dressed. The other teens, young men now, did the same, and the three of them marched up the mountain to confront their master.

Whom they found sobbing uncontrollably like a child half of his supposed age.

Hien Ro made several realizations then. Intuitions, really, as he began to understand what it was that had happened. He wouldn’t really understand until his master explained the time reversal technique, but he knew enough to guess.

“Master. Little Bug. Come down and join us. You don’t have to stay up here,” he said.

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“How can you say that?” Little bug demanded. “How can you be here after—”

“It was worse for you than it was for us,” Hien Ro said. “Wasn’t it?”

Little Bug was silent. “Do you know how that magic works?” he asked at length.

“You split time somehow,” Hien Ro asked. “And then you bring our souls back with you to before you did it.”

“Yes,” Little Bug said. “It only works because of the bonds we have formed. We are linked. Even as I kill you, I love you, and it is that love which allows me to resurrect you endlessly. But each time I murder you, a crack forms in the bond between us. And it is like cutting off a piece of my heart.”

“Then why must you do it?” Polkluk asked.

“How can I let you go to face what this world is becoming without preparing you for the fact that some of you will die in the fight to come?” Little Bug demanded. “How can I let you go without telling myself that I have done everything I can to prepare you for anything that you might face, including death.”

Hien Ro was silent for a moment. “But you haven’t prepared us for death,” he said at last. “When I died, I was unprepared for it.”

Little Bug was silent. “No. I will not teach you what you ask, Hien Ro.”

“Teach me to awaken my soul, so that—”

“NO!” Little Bug shouted. “You do not know what you ask! I curse the name of the one who taught me, and I curse the world where I learned, and I curse myself for listening! It has brought me nothing but suffering, and I will not inflict the same upon my friends!”

“Teach me so that I might understand you,” Hien Ro demanded. “If not in this life, then in the next, when we are separated by death—”

“That will never happen, Hien Ro,” Little Bug said. “For we will be separated by life before then. The convergence ends one you pass your graduation exam. After you have succeeded in killing me, you will go north and stand as a bulwark against the growing corruption. Beyond that I cannot see, but that is where our paths finally diverge.”

Hien Ro was silent. “Come back down the mountain with us, Little Bug,” he said at length.

The boy rose.

And the master followed the disciples home.

~~~~~~~

The others had flinched when Hien Ro had brought Little Bug back into the communal kitchen. They had watched in silence as Ro prepared a meal from their leftovers and served it to the old soul in the young boy’s body. Little Bug had eaten mechanically, and then he had gone to bed, where Jumper landed in the window and sang him a sad song.

Once they were relatively certain that their master was asleep, Hien Ro turned to his companions. More than his companions. To truly master the North Star Guiding Formation, they were often like extensions of himself.

But they were not connected in that way right now. The pain of having him die into the collective was too fresh, and they all needed time to heal from that cauterization.

“He’s doing it because he loves us,” Hien Ro said at last.

“He killed you, Ro,” Yara said, her voice hot. “I felt you die!”

“Who knows what death is better than someone who remembers a thousand of them?” Hien Ro challenged. “He knew what he was doing to us, and he had his reasons for it. This is harder for him than for us.”

“How can that possibly be true?” Yara demanded hotly. “Ro, he—”

“What would happen if we fought Ko Ren and he slew me then? What would happen to us if we never felt someone die while we were linked by the formation?” Hien Ro challenged. “I’ll tell you what would happen. We would have fallen apart just like we did against Little Bug, and then Ko Ren would have slain us one by one with ease.”

The others were silent as they considered his words. They reluctantly saw the truth in them.

“When we go into battle for real, we won’t have Little Bug to revive us,” Hien Ro reminded them. “Whatever he did to bring us back, it wasn’t easy for him to do. It was difficult on a level that we can’t even understand, I believe. Perhaps on several levels that would stagger our minds. And he did it because he loved us, so that when the time comes and we are in true danger, we do not freeze up from the pain, we do not stop because of the agony, and we do not fall apart because of the loss.”

The group was silent.

“It changes things,” Thaseus said at last. “If he is able to turn back time, then—I’ve never heard of anyone being able to do that. Not at gold rank. I don’t believe that even the Lord of the Realm can do that.”

“Little Bug can,” Polkluk said. “That’s all we need to know. Next time we face him, we’ll know.”

They nodded, and one by one they broke off to go to sleep.

In the morning, they tried to act as though nothing had changed. They tried to smile at their master, but despite themselves, things were different.

The convergence was reaching its end, and their training was almost over.

It could not come soon enough, as they were desperately needed in the north.

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