Chapter 30
Cascades are strange things. They can start small and end large, like an avalanche, or they can start big and end big, like tsunamis. Or like when two dragon veins, traveling in opposite directions beneath a mountain, create an unseen tension that builds for centuries, only to have a sudden lance in the pressure that has been building.
The children thought nothing in particular about their actions. They simply cultivated for a few hours with the formation that was created, mostly unaware of what was going on beneath them. The Qi that boiled out of the earth reacted with the qi in the air and the waterfall, creating a sudden flash. This was the purpose of the quick formation the children had set up, so they were unconcerned.
They might have been more concerned if they’d realized just how extensively the mountain and the surrounding area had been warded, and what the introduction of a powerful formation such as their Four Elements Equal Paths Gathering Array would do to the lesser gathering arrays set up around it.
The spirit of the mountain awoke, briefly. If it were human, it would have felt a pin in its butt and ropes around its chest. The ropes had been there for centuries, building upon each other endlessly, only rarely being dismantled once they had served its purpose.
The spirit sighed, realizing that it had been claimed in its slumber. It debated whether to do something about this or not.
It was not a hasty spirit, however, and so it would wait and judge those who were feeding off of it before making a judgment. If they were worthy, then it would allow them to stay.
However, it thought, looking at the haphazard arrays strewn about its mountain, the mess would have to go. It stretched its will, and a thousand defunct arrays that had been sleeping for centuries came awake.
Sending the elders of the Whispering Guides Sect into a panic.
~~~~~~
“Hey. Oy! Olin! Are you sleeping?” Ko asked, pulling the older boy out of his meditation.
“What?” Olin asked.
“We’re hungry. Is there someplace good to eat that you can show us, or do we have to go back to Elder Yotu’s place for grub?” Ko asked.
Olin blinked, looking past the water-walker to the other children, who were stretching after having spent hours unmoving. “But, you’re, the Qi is so rich right now. Aren’t you going to take advantage of this?”
“We did,” Ko explained. “And we will tomorrow too, and every day until we leave. But we’re too young to not get hungry or have to go to the bathroom, so we need to take breaks. Anyway, this is a haphazard circle compared to what we have back home. Look, I’m not saying that you have to come with us, but if you’re not then we will be telling Elder Yotu that you abandoned us when you were supposed to be our guides. I mean, that’s not a threat or anything, we’re just not going to cover for you.”
“Yeah, I understand,” Olin said. He pulled himself out from under the waterfall, swimming to the shore. He willed the water to leave his clothes, and in moments he was dry again. He was reluctant to leave now that the elements in the area were riled up, but he did need those contribution points more.
“Okay, so the dining hall is this way,” he said, giving the elemental gathering focus one last longing look over his shoulder as he led them away from the waterfall. The interrupted tour continued after the dinner, and then the children returned to their lodgings at the base of the mountain.
The hushed conversations from the adults mostly went right over the children’s heads. They did not see Elder Yotu, but weren’t terribly worried about it. They noticed that he’d been busy in the library, but that didn’t stop them from resuming their ransacking of his scrolls and books.
~~~~~~
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Lira glanced around at her fellow sect elders. She was uncertain who was responsible, but the activation of the dormant formations was growing into a looming threat. They were slowly reaching full power in near unison. Most of these formations had been long forgotten, the relics of elders past who had either died or moved on from the sect long ago.
She had a mental list of suspects, but whoever they were had a more detailed history of the mountain than she, as first among the elders, had access to.
While the effects of the formations were, so far, mostly benign, the amount of Qi that was involved posed a serious threat to the sect itself.
She sighed. “Well, any solutions?” she asked her fellows.
The room was filled with nervous expressions.
“We could try to dismantle the formations before they reach any sort of critical mass,” Elder Yotu pointed out. “It will take some time to study the more complicated ones, but many of them follow standard principles. The only reason they were left intact to begin with was that nobody cared enough to dismantle them. They were supposed to have been rendered inert, but it seems that we have been lax in enforcing that policy.”
The other elders nodded in agreement. It was the obvious solution.
It was also going to be a lot of work.
“There’s no reason we need to do everything ourselves,” Argoth pointed out. “This is why we have outer sect members. If we issue a bounty on identifying all of the activated formations, then we can send our formation masters along at a more leisurely pace to dismantle them as they approach critical mass.”
Again there was a mumbling of agreement. It was self-obvious, everyone knew that.
It was still going to be a lot of work.
Lira sighed. “I’ll issue the instructions to our outer-sect members and instruct the guards that the junior members of the sect are not to be impeded in accessing normally secure locations on the mountain as they search for activating formations. This is a mess. I wonder what caused it?”
There was mumbling from the other elders, and the meeting disbanded. The fact that it lasted for ten minutes and not ten hours was a testament to how urgent the situation truly was.
~~~~~
Fiora had been searching for the children who had robbed her twice now all day, but they remained elusive until she’d heard that they were last seen cultivating by the waterfall. She rushed along the path, bursting out from beyond the corner and shouting a challenge.
“You dirty useless thieves, I challenge you to—”
She frowned, looking around at the empty waterfall. She glanced about for witnesses for a moment, but there was nobody there. Which was both a relief and a problem.
Then she noticed the Qi density. All four elements, not just the water that was usually rich near the waterfalls. She blinked in surprise, then saw the wooden spike and the everburning brasier, its light flickering off the cascading water.
She spent a moment inspecting the gathering formation, then grinned. It was obvious where these items had come from. She cared nothing for the scratches on the ground or the wooden pole driven into the ground, but the brasier would be perfect for her cultivation cave.
She spent a moment investigating it, trying to figure out how to turn it off. She thought she figured it out, reaching out to run a bit of Qi through the formation that should--
A flare of fire knocked her on her butt. She sat up, blinking. She touched her face, then rushed over to the water to look at her reflection.
Her hair had been scorched, her eyebrows burnt off.
Realizing that the brasier was not a simple toy, she began recalculating her theft. But she never did figure out how to make the thing stop burning, eventually withdrawing empty handed. It was then that she caught word of the hunt for the formations that were awakening all over the mountain.
Since there was a bounty for errant formations, she turned in the information about what she had found near the waterfall for a handful of contribution points and resumed hunting the children for their fated confrontation.