76. Darkness

The accounts of the battle of Resh Fali focus on the acts of the mortals and their accounts of what they witnessed between the golden path cultivators and the gold-ranked undead monstrosities.

The accounts state the facts in tactical terms. Resh Fali was established on the eastern shore of the isthmus of Korein, the connection between the northern and southern continents. While tropical in nature, the previous battles between silver and gold combatants had already burnt away most of the foliage. Thus were the fields empty save for the ashes and the mud of combat.

When the great leader Di Ram, who led the mortal forces in this, their darkest hour, committed all of his forces to holding the isthmus rather than accepting the previous plan of retreating and waging guerrilla tactics against the overwhelming numbers from the north, which his advisers had previously suggested, the fortifications of Resh Fali were extended significantly.

Over the course of the battle, waves of reinforcements arrived from the south, each arriving just in time to relieve the wounded and desperate forces.

Each soldier of bronze rank or higher was expected to wear an amulet which would, upon their death, ignite into a conflagration, taking as many of their enemies with them into oblivion as possible. The mortal soldiers were forced to man the ramparts and serve as auxiliaries, but yet they died in droves, their bodies cremated by the cultivators whom they served into the moment of death.

For eighteen days and nineteen nights did these brave men and women stand while the golden path cultivators Di Ram and Tornolai the Raging Tyrant did constant combat with the monstrous gold ranked undead monsters of the northern forces. Supported by the Peach Blossoms, whose mighty North Star Guiding Formation allowed them to fight at the level of a golden path cultivator for a time, these heroes did prevent the immediate obliteration of their forces and thus does the world remember their name.

On all of these matters the mortal scholars are in agreement. For centuries they reviewed the documents and the accounts of the soldiers and the officers from those days and came to an official version.

But there is no agreed upon account of the nineteenth night.

The darkest night, when the ramparts were broken and the formations which prevented the entrance of the undead to the city itself were shattered.

The night when the peach blossoms withered.

The night when Tornolai the Raging Tyrant fell from the skies,

The night when Di Ram the Beneficent spoke with his ascended father.

The night when the heavens turned their face from the earth.

The night when Little Bug stood defiant against the darkness.

The night when the darkness shied away from the light.

~~~~~

Hien Ro gasped as pain ran through his meridians. He was overtaxed, having fought for more than two weeks without rest.

As had the rest of the disciples of little bug. He cast out his senses, scanning the battlefield despite his exhaustion. Despite his weakness, he remained atop the tower where the rest of the Peach Blossoms stood defiant.

“How are you feeling, Xol?” he asked the only disciple who was not linked with their collective.

“I will live,” the injured jaguar said, who had withdrawn from the collective only so that his pain did not distract the others. “Soon I will be able to fight again. I am not weak, I will—”

“You’ll see to your wounds and stop being so male that you don’t kill yourself by overtaxing yourself,” Yara scolded, and the jaguar winced and put its head back down.

He lie on his side, with a mortal attendant sewing up his stomach, having gotten his entrails back in more or less the right position.

Hien Ro knew all too well how the feline disciple felt at the moment.

“We do not fight to protect you, Xol,” He said. “We fight to honor the sacrifice you made. That attack was meant for Taimei. Had you not blocked it, then she would be on death’s door.”

“Yeah, thanks fuzzball,” Taimei agreed.

Xol relaxed more. “Just do not let them through,” the Jaguar said. “I will not say that I stood this long for you to fail at the last…”

He closed his eyes.

The others closed theirs.

“Thank you, first disciple,” Taimei said again, tears in her eyes.

“Thank you, first disciple,” the rest of them echoed.

Xol exhaled his last breath,

And his body burst into purifying flames.

The others spent just a moment to mourn his passing, silently and each in their own way.

Then Hien Ro raised a fist. “Gather our strength. This night will be worse than the others.”

“How do you know that?” Polkluk asked.

“It fits the trend,” Hien Ro said, a sad grin on his face. “Every night has been worse than the one before it.”

The others grinned at the dark humor of his statement. Then they flew off toward the gold-ranked threat they sensed to the north east.

They remained united in the face of loss. Diminished but undiminished in spirit, the sacrifice of The First Disciple weakened them and strengthened their resolve.

~~~~~~

Tornolai was alive.

In the face of undeath, he had never felt so alive.

He reached out through the storm he had conjured, far to the north, behind enemy lines. His role was not to hold the line. His role, which he had volunteered for, was to take the fight to the enemy.

Alone and with no expectation of help from either Di Ram nor the little disciples, he unleashed heaven’s judgment upon the army that marched south.

With the world itself as a generator, powering an endless storm that he directed, his fury was unbridled and his wrath untainted. Each lightning strike struck down a silver ranked threat.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

The wind blew hail and sand, cutting through the lesser undead.

The winds slowed the advance. Every moment that he could buy relieved the pressure on his juniors to the south.

He grinned, wondering where that thought came from. He hadn’t had juniors in a very long time, since he had walked out of the sect and promised never to come back. He had kept that promise, going so far as to cross to another continent, leaving behind everything he’d known to play king fish in a small pond.

His sect master would be furious to see how he had wasted the centuries he’d spent whimsically interposing himself in politics, appearing suddenly to throw a wrench in this plot or that coup. All while maintaining the facade.

The facade that he didn’t care.

That he wasn’t building towards something.

And then that little brat had appeared and done in two years what he’d been fighting to do for centuries. He grinned. The tournament had been a masterstroke. He should have thought of it decades ago.

He had tilled the soil, and he hoped that this Little Bug could reap a fine empire from the field he had prepared.

Tornolai knew that he would not be around to see it, because he had seen the black hound. There upon the ramparts during the wedding, the hound had looked at him and Tornolai had known. Death watched him, and soon it would be time to take that final hand which reaches out to every soul when all other hope is lost.

But he would be damned if he didn’t take his share of these abominations with him!

He laughed and he smote . He smote and he smote and he smote .

And then the enemy that he couldn’t smite appeared.

“You there, you are causing me problems,” the voice said, sonorous and patient. “Kindly remove yourself from my path and I shall grant you a boon.”

“Die!” Tornolai shouted, striking with all the fury of a hurricane at the flying enemy. It’s face was covered in a prayer sheet, and its heart was pierced with a iron spike.

The figure blocked the coalescing lightning with a crimson shield of Qi.

“If that is the form you wish your boon to take,” the figure said. “Then I can oblige.”

To the south, the mortals flinched as the lightning and the thunder of the storm to the north intensified a thousand fold.

And then they winced again as the lightning suddenly stopped.

Followed by the rain.

Slowly, the clouds dispersed.

And the stars began to shine once more.

~~~~~~

Di Phon was pleasantly chatting with Mai Mai. They had returned to the palace of new arrivals while waiting for his own palace to be built. That he would get a palace was not a question, the only question was how large he wanted it to be and what style it should be designed in.

He enjoyed frustrating the architects with his humble demands.

“A man’s palace should be large enough for all of his servants and family to live comfortably. That is all I ask,” he said.

“So how large? How many bedrooms?”

“How many servants do I have?” he had rejoined.

The architect had gone to fetch the answer, and found that only Mai Mai was officially registered as the personal staff of Di Phon. There was space for a boy who was missing at the moment, but the efforts to track him down were very promising.

“We cannot build a palace for three people,” the architects said.

So they went to the palace of new arrivals to recruit a proper staff for the ascendant who had been recognized by the Lord of the Realm, only to find that they had already made efforts to find a staff for Di Phon, only to find that his list of requirements for every position were absurd.

His maids must know the difference between dew and the drops of morning. His groundskeepers must be able to sew the light of their soul into the fabric of their garden. His tailors and seamstresses must know how to keep the flame of hope ignited in the smithy of their heart.

If they weren’t dealing with an ascended one, they would simply think that he was being poetic. The possibility that he was being literal, or that there was some cultural references which they were unaware of, kept them from filling any of the positions with an unsatisfactory applicant.

Little birds were watching the arguments between the palace staff and the architects with great amusement,

When suddenly.

Di Phon,

All of Di Phon.

Was called away.

He blinked as between one thought and the next, his body, his true body, was in a celestial palace. He looked around at the simple architecture and felt genuine surprise for the first time since he had ascended. Before him, on a throne on a dias, sat the lord.

The old man, ancient and weary, smiled at him.

“Welcome to my true home, Di Phon,” Loshi said. “You cannot stay long, or your body will be torn apart by the tidal forces of a thousand worlds rubbing up against each other.”

Di Phon promptly kowtowed. “Thank you for the invitation, My Lord. I am your humble guest.”

“I have investigated the source of the corruption. You were correct, it stems from the world of your birth,” Lord Loshi said. “And it reaches out through the ways between stars which I have carefully constructed and which my servants maintain. Should things have turned out differently, that would have been your task. Maintaining the bonds between worlds is a costly endeavor, but ultimately rewarding.”

“I am willing to serve my lord in whatever capacity I may,” Di Phon said humbly.

“I can see that. Your humility is a strange thing to witness, Di Phon. Normally those who ascend past their birth world are filled with hunger and ambition, having cut out their ties from their past life and being desperate to fill the wounds with more power,” Loshi said. “It grows wearying.”

“I lost my appetite for power long ago,” Di Phon said.

“You are a child, Di Phon. If you do not wish for power, then how am I to reward you for the service you perform for me?” Loshi asked.

“Save my world.”

Loshi was quiet for a moment. “So that is it. I thought so.”

“I apologize for my presumption. Obviously I needed only point out the flaw in your—”

“I am burning out the connection between Atla and the network of other stars. The energy that it has been tainted with is poisonous, insidious, and contagious. To protect trillions of lives, I sacrifice a few billion. I am sorry, Di Phon. Your request is denied.”

With those words, the Lord of the Realm waved his hands, and thousands of strands which connected the world of Atla to the larger cosmos burned away in an instant, save for one.

“I offer you this one chance, before I cut out the world of Atla completely. You may speak to the people, as my servants once spoke to you to invite you to join my court,” Lord Loshi said.

Di Phon, his face stained by tears, kowtowed once more. “I understand. I thank the lord for his generosity. May I have a moment to construct my farewell?”

“You have one hour. After that, this strand too will burn.”

“I do not need that long, Lord,” Di Phon said. “How does it work?”

“Speak, and be heard,” The lord said, and Di Phon felt the connection between him and his birth world.

He closed his eyes, and he said his farewell.

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