Mercion’s group arrived early the next day. Rieren had been waiting for them for a while, content with her decision to accompany them.

Though, she was hoping it wouldn’t involve travelling on the giant flying lizard.

It wasn’t that she minded serpentine creatures such as that thing. She was more concerned with being cornered on such a small platform so high up in the air and with nowhere for her to go.

Batcat meowed a reminder.

“Yes, yes,” Rieren said. “I know, cat.”

She did recognize that it was a bit of her paranoia resurfacing. If she was to go with Mercion’s group, she ought to muster the basic amount of trust to join them on their chosen mount.

Elder Olg had already left. She hadn’t seen him disappearing, but it had to be the same trick he had refused to reveal in the destroyed Stormlit Moon Sect.

“Are you always in the habit of speaking to your cat?” Mercion asked as his little party landed.

Behind him, the lizard seemed happy to let everyone get off its back. It curled its wings inward and shivered in seeming pleasure.

“Cats are a delight to speak to, my lord,” Rieren said. “Mainly because they cannot speak back and interrupt you.”

“Oh, does yours not meow incessantly at every opportunity?”

Rieren blinked. Perhaps Batcat wasn’t an ideal representation of what it was like to have a cat as a pet. “It would seem I am blessed.”

Mercion laughed. “I am glad for you. I would ask you to join us, but we must wait a while yet.”

“Why so?”

“We have someone else joining us. They are here already, so it shouldn’t take too long.”

Rieren was intrigued, and a little alarmed. He hadn’t mentioned anyone joining them yesterday.

Mercion was right. They didn’t have to wait for long. Monkey’s balls, even the silence descending upon them didn’t get to become awkward. Silomene was kind enough to spare them such torture.

“I was not aware you would be accompanying us,” Rieren said by way of greeting. In fact, she wasn’t simply surprised at Silomene’s appearance. She was actually suspicious the woman was the reason behind Mercion finding her here.

“Greetings, Lord Mercion.” Silomene bowed her head a little at Mercion. “And to you, Rieren. I was ordered by my clan to return post haste, so I am to accompany my lord.”

“Are you all done with your cultivation here?”

“Sadly, no. But there is no time to waste, I’m afraid.”

“Silomene is correct,” Mercion said. “We should be off, now.”

He jerked his chin at one of the other cultivators, one of his clan retainers from yesterday.

As the man began preparing a strange mixture, which he then fed to the winged lizard, Rieren wondered what exact role Mercion filled in the his Archnoble clan. Could he be an active scion, like Essalina was for the Arteroth? Or was he a son of the branch family serving the head family as loyally as he could?

He was a cultivator, of that there was no doubt, but his actual strength was a mystery. Mercion felt weak. The way he paid so little attention to the Enlightenment Locale suggested he was either at the Mid-Enlightened realm at least, or he wasn’t close to breaking through to the Enlightened realm yet.

Rieren’s thoughts were interrupted when she noticed what was occurring with the strange lizard creature. Batcat hissed a little.

Mercion snickered. “It seems your kitten does not like El.”

“El? Is that the name you gave to that thing?”

“That is what El prefers to be called.”

Spirit Beasts and their strange inclinations. Rieren had already determined that the winged lizard had to be some sort of Spirt Beast in much the same way Batcat was.

When El finished eating everything in the bag one of the retainers was holding, it started to change. Where before it had been an oversized gangly lizard with its wings attached to its arms, now it turned even more serpentine. It lost its legs entirely and its head became far more snakelike.

But its whole body had grown to five times the size it had been previously, and its scales had turned from the colour of new leaves to the shade of a forest seen in the distance.

“It can transform?” Rieren asked.

“Depending on the food El consumes, it can assume certain specific forms, yes. Now, let us get aboard and get going.”

Rieren joined the others, Mercion leading the way. Strangely, there was no sign of Lord Malloh with Silomene today. Rieren figured it would be impolite to inquire, so she kept silent about their seemingly missing companion.

Despite its compunctions, Batcat readily joined Rieren on hopping onto the lizard’s enlarged back. The scales were craggy, preventing sliding, which Rieren was thankful for. The last time she had been this close to a serpentine creature was when she had encountered Fellserpents, and their backs had no such friction.

With a flap of its great wings, El took off.

Like the others, Rieren had lowered herself on the lizard’s back. Wind whistled past her ears as they flew onwards and gathered speed. In fact, the Spirit Beast began to move so fast that the wind was starting to snatch away her breaths. Thankfully, she’d had practice breathing in such circumstances aboard her Dawn Cloud.

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Unfortunately, it looked like conversation was still going to be difficult, however. They all seemed to be concentrating entirely on getting to their destination.

Rieren focused more on the sights she was now able to behold. The Dawn Cloud didn’t bring her to such great heights. She had to be at least two-thirds of Lionshard mountain’s height above the land. An incredible elevation. If the day hadn’t been so clear, they might have touched the clouds had any fallen on their path.

She had been wrong. It seemed there was indeed going to be conversation.

After some time had passed, Mercion snapped his fingers. This signalled one of the retainers to begin channeling Essence. The air twisted around them. Rieren recognized that he was channelling wind-Aspected Essence, calming the air in their vicinity and granting them room to speak and breathe easily.

Mercion had turned around to face them directly. “So, let us speak of what is to come.”

Silomene raised a polite hand. “I have a question, my lord.”

Mercion stared at her, then at her hand, then back down at her. “Go on.”

“Will we be making any stops along the way?”

“…why?”

“Well… I would prefer some breaks. To stretch my legs, get some food and drink some water, all those physical needs one has, you understand.”

“…you are a cultivator, Silomene. It is to rid ourselves of these needs that we do this.”

“Oh. I thought it was to fight the monsters.”

“Well, that too certainly. But we used to do this when there weren’t any monsters. Well, not as many as there are now.”

“Of course. My apologies, my lord.”

Mercion waved it away, now looking displeased, though Rieren suspected it was more at himself than at Silomene’s strange question. “Think nothing of it. We will have some pauses now and then.”

Rieren stared between Mercion and Silomene, wondering what their relationship was. They seemed more friendly than mere acquaintances. She almost entertained the idea that they had feelings for each other, but one seemed too serious and the other too oblivious for that.

“But I wish to clarify some things,” Mercion said. “As I am certain you have many questions, Rieren.”

“I am only curious as to the specifics of our objectives and what might be expected of me. I will be upfront that my main goal is to continue my cultivation and I do not wish to be pulled away from that goal entirely.”

“Fear not. I imagine part of your willingness to join us was to reach the Enlightenment Locale under Falstrom, yes?”

Rieren nodded. She assumed it wasn’t a good thing she had been figured out so easily, but at the same time, wasn’t she supposed to be letting go of her fear of being discovered?

“Worry not, our ultimate destination is Falstrom,” Mercion said. “However, our objective, as you wish to know them, is mainly reinforcing the different frontiers of this little war we have begun against the Abyssals. Once you have accomplished your goals, you may begin your cultivation, with the help of the clans’ great store of resources.”

“And what do these specific goals consist of, my lord?”

“Shoring up defences on our outposts. Safeguarding specific frontiers. Providing reinforcements where needed. I would ask you to join a foray as well, but that would not be fair to you, so we will refrain from doing so.”

Rieren looked away, trying to think of the potential pitfalls of such a setup. She could see several benefits. But still. “How many such objectives would you wish for me to complete before I can begin my cultivation?”

At that question, both of the retainers twitched. Perhaps Rieren was offending them with her mercenary questions, but then, perhaps they were essentially treating her like a mercenary. The first rule of good business was establishing the specifics in good-enough detail.

Mercion, skillful and diplomatic scion of an Archnoble clan, showed no such reaction. “Attaching a number to the objectives we think is best to complete is a pointless endeavour. However, we think a month-long service is enough to suffice. Once a month is up, you may continue with your cultivation, and we will certainly provide what assistance we can.”

“One month of service and I will be an official member of both the Ordorian and the Stannerig clans?”

“Correct. One month, and you are free to do as you wish.”

Rieren supposed that was as good a deal as she was likely to get anywhere. One thing about being involved in more battles was the potential to gather more loot, and thus, re-earn all the Credits she had spent already. While Credits would be less necessary since she’d have two clans worth of support, they would still be good to have.

“You haven’t yet explained how you enacted such a… such devastation upon the Abyssals,” Mercion said. “I understand if you wish to keep such a thing to yourself, but I only hope that you will be able to reenact it when the time comes.”

Ah. It had finally come to this. This was the next big step in Rieren letting go of her need for secrecy, a blow against the paranoia that still wouldn’t let go of her, that kept resurfacing again and again despite her constant pushback.

But then, there was a balance to be maintained. A cultivator did not make good progress, did not advance through the realms and through the hierarchy of society, without proper discretion. And yet again, she couldn’t simply brute force and remain mum. That would leave the attention solely upon her. Inviting greater scrutiny was the opposite of discretion.

Still, she couldn’t just lie. There was a great chance that the truth would come out, one way or another. Rieren ought not to sabotage her standing with those who could be useful.

Rieren smiled at Mercion. “It is simply a matter of knowing what to purchase from the System Shop.”

She didn’t elaborate, even when the look on his face was expectant. Eventually, Mercion sighed, scratching his head. Rieren thought it best to take the conversation in a different direction.

“How much of the Shatterlands do you estimate has been overrun by Abyssals?” Rieren asked.

Mercion sighed even more deeply this time. “I can give you no specifics, but it is far too much. While we have been mercifully able to save a great many people—thanks in no small part to people’s own great efforts—we have also been reduced to holding ourselves in a few specific locations. As you can imagine, people do not take well to being cooped up like chickens.”

Rieren could imagine all too well. She had seen how desperately the refugee camp back on Lionshard mountain had been organized. Lack of enough food and drink, lack of proper sanitation measures, lack of privacy and requisite housing, and not even counting the various mental issues such as the general panic, disregard of individuality, and so on.

“It is getting worse too,” Mercion said. “You must have seen the other meteors.”

She nodded. “They are rather difficult to miss.”

“It is surprising we faced no trouble with the last one, yet these subsequent ones have proved… troublesome.”

Rieren decided to play a little coy. “Troublesome how?”

“It seems the meteors bear monsters within them.”

“As in, Aetherians.”

“Arisen.”

Rieren blinked. So that one creature she had fought hadn’t been a lone scenario. There were others like it spreading out all over these lands, perhaps the entirety of the Elderlands. She had suspected the Abyssals and the Aetherians had some sort of cooperative effort afoot after her encounter with both kinds in Lionshard dungeon, but she hadn’t thought that it would involve physically combining together to form a new race of monsters.

“What are they?” she asked.

“Combined creatures, of a kind,” Silomene said. “Embodying the nature of both Abyssals and Aetherians.”

“Of the Abyss and the Aether.”

“Correct.”

She wondered what that implied. The Abyssals were invading the Mortal realm because they couldn’t sustain themselves in the Abyss. There were even hints that whatever was driving them out of the Abyss had to be even worse.

But that at least made sense. What good reason could the Aetherians have for coming into this world? Had something similar occurred in the Aether, the realm the Aetherians originated from? That certainly hadn’t been the case in the last timeline. In fact, Arisen were an entirely new creation, unless Rieren had never come across one before, which was unlikely.

One of Mercion’s retainers cleared his throat. “We are approaching one of the sites.”

Mercion quickly pulled himself away towards the head of the flying lizard.

“Sites?” Rieren asked after him. “Of what?”

Mercion spared her one, grimacing glance. “Of a meteor strike.”