It wasn’t difficult for Rieren to make her way back the direction she had come. The cliff edge wasn’t too far from Kalvia’s location, and once she found it, it was just a bit of a long trek back to the surface.
The strangeness appeared when she finally reached the surface itself. Where the temple had been abandoned and derelict before, now it was buzzing with activity.
“Cat,” Rieren said. “You didn’t warn there was a function going on in the temple.”
Batcat only murmured sleepily from atop Rieren’s head.
She shook her head and forged onwards. Before long, she arrived at the little trap door that led outside. The noise of people was evident beyond it. Some talking, some clattering what sounded like weapons at one place and utensils at another, hammering going on elsewhere. This was a hive of activity that Rieren hadn’t foreseen at all.
It all sounded as though they were busy preparing for something, as though the proper event hadn’t begun yet. She held back her curse. If whatever the organizers had planned was ongoing, she might have been able to slip out with no fuss while everyone was distracted.
Technically, most people ought to be too absorbed by the tasks they were performing to notice her. But tasks, especially ones that were rote or had taken too much energy, were also the times when people were most susceptible to distractions. Distractions like watching a cultivator climb out of a secret doorway on the floor.
Rieren halted right next to the trap door. Then she slowly opened it by a fraction, just to see what was going on.
She was wrong. Where she had thought there was some kind of magnanimous event about to happen some point soon, in truth, there was just a refugee camp.
Of course, Rieren had no trouble recognizing it for what it was. She had lived in one for the first few days in this timeline. People dirty and quite obviously displaced, looking terrified, confused, and on the verge of despair. Little children sticking close to their parents. All of them burdened with packs full of worldly possessions.
Ah, so the city was taking in those who had been displaced by the monsters. Those who couldn’t or wouldn’t stand against the Abyssals directly, for whatever reason.
Rieren hadn’t seen the refugees before, but perhaps they hadn’t been in the city then. Perhaps there had been enough land available that they could have been spread out and guarded elsewhere.
Whatever the case, she couldn’t go out just then. Rieren had long ago learned the valuable skill of patience. So, she closed the trapdoor and waited until nightfall. She didn’t even try to cultivate or channel Essence. Some of those in the little group might have progressed enough that they could sense Essence now, and she didn’t want to alarm them.
It would be quite weird to sense Essence channelling going on behind a wall.
Dusk was only a few hours off, however. Soon after, night fell. It was time for Rieren to head out.
She squeezed out past a thin opening of the trapdoors. The little camp had settled down and most people were trying to doze away their terror, though no doubt for many it was proving to be difficult. But the darkness was enough to cloak Rieren, and since Batcat was still sleeping, she had little trouble sneaking to the edge of camp.
Some cursory guards had been posted to keep watch at the official entrances. Rieren evaded them by simply vaulting over one of the temple’s walls.
Rieren hurried through the thoroughfares without looking elsewhere too much. Her senses were sharp enough that she would notice anything surprising occurring in her vicinity. She met no trouble along the way. Though, if she was being honest, the state of Falstrom itself was troubling.
The streets weren’t at all lively like she had seen when she had been making her way to the Enlightenment Locale. Now, everyone was staying indoors. The only people out were the occasional guard or a patrol of the same passing by.
Rieren avoided dealing with those groups by staying in the shadows when they came close enough. It felt a little demeaning to hide, but then, she didn’t wish to deal with them just then. Her first order of priority was making her way past the tightened security over to the manor she had shared with Silomene.
Some of the last memories Batcat had shown her had depicted Mercion and Silomene spending a greater deal of time in and near Falstrom. They could only do so much by ranging out and trying to assist others in their battles. After all, they needed rest at times too.
Once Rieren found them, she would be able to determine how best she could assist with the current situation. She was certain Silomene and Mercion wouldn’t directly turn her in to the Avatars. Even if they couldn’t allow her to rejoin them in an official capacity, there was nothing saying she couldn’t help in a more secretive way.
But first, she had to get to them. It was getting tedious hiding away from the soldiers, continuously pausing and restarting her trip. Ideally, a waywagon would have been best, but she doubted she would be allowed on one. Not without heavy questioning.
Her Dawn Cloud was a potential alternative, but that would mean alerting those who could sense Essence being channelled. They would no doubt come after her like hounds on the hunt, determined to find out the abnormality. Besides, considering there were cultivators stationed to combat any meteors that got too close to Falstrom, she didn’t want to be shot out of the sky.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Frustrated with the jerky nature of her journey, Rieren had barely made it to the southern quarter when she came to a stop. A curious person had caught her eye.
Gorint Malloh was walking alone in the middle of the street. There was something furtive about the way his shoulders were hunched, something alarming in the obvious tension in the way he held himself. He was armed, the handle of a long knife jutting from a belt at his waist.
Rieren considered her options for a split second. Then she began following him.
One of her goals was ascertaining what exactly was happening in the Shatterlands from the defenders’ perspective. Gorint Malloh would be able to satisfy that curiosity with ease, considering he was the Ordorian Clanmaster’s right hand man.
Rieren stuck close, but not so much that he might detect her. None of the patrols accosted him and no guards stopped him. If this was a curfew, the rules clearly didn’t apply to Malloh.
That just made her more curious about his destination. Something told her he wasn’t simply heading back home.
All the while, Batcat slept on atop her head. Apparently, the kitten felt nothing of Rieren’s excitement. It was content to continue slumbering away the time without a care in the world. Idly, she wondered how it might feel to have nothing to care about for two-thirds of a day. She was certain that’s how long Batcat slept sometimes.
Eventually, they arrived at their destination. A little tavern that was still open. Gorint Malloh went inside. The light and distant noise spilling out from the temporarily open doorway professed that the tavern had decent company. Rieren looked up. This tavern… it looked familiar, though she couldn’t profess she had ever been in one.
She blinked at the signboard. It depicted a padlock over a canister of salt.
The Sealed Salt.
This… why was this was a tavern? In the last timeline, it had been more of a tea house, though liquor had also been available at steeper prices. Rieren shook her head. Maybe the owner had decided it was more profitable to entertain drunks in this mad redo of the original timeline. She certainly couldn’t blame him.
Rieren’s eyes fell on Malloh again. Had she just followed him all this way only to see him get drunk? Maybe he was going to let liquor wash away all his tension. Maybe that flask he kept had finally run out and he needed a refill.
She bypassed the guards in the area—which wasn’t difficult as a lot of them were in the tavern too—and positioned herself near one of the windows. The interior was as raucous as one would expect a drunkhouse to be.
A bunch of men were drinking and talking loudly enough for the hubbub of conversation to press through the windowpanes. Some women were grouped around a distant table, conversing lowly but looking no less inebriated. Serving maids wended around tables carrying more drinks like fish swimming through river rapids.
For a brief moment, the scene seemed absurd when compared to the dreary state of the rest of Falstrom. But in truth, it made sense in a way. People needed to let loose, especially when the world itself seemed to be ending around them.
Rieren’s eyes found her mark soon enough, though. Entering the tavern hadn’t improved Malloh’s mood in any way. He was still tense as a strung bow ready to loose the nocked arrow.
Gorint Malloh made his way to a lone man at the head of the tavern near the counter around the barkeep. For a second, Rieren stared at the broad-shouldered man there. He was drunk as many of the others in the tavern, but there was something familiar about him she couldn’t place. Maybe if she saw—
Rieren’s mouth fell open involuntarily when the man turned his face just enough. She did know him.
That was the Stannerig Clanmaster.
The former one, to be precise. He had been ousted from his position by his daughter, who had then gone on to marry the new Ordorian Clanmaster—who had similarly wrested control of his clan from his father—and join the clans together.
Rieren had known the older Clanmasters didn’t approve of the union. Not of their children, nor of their clans as a whole. She wouldn’t be surprised if they were some of the greatest voices of dissent. But why was one of them here, in some tavern in the middle of the night, surrounded by others who clearly didn’t see him as their superior?
In any normal setting, everyone in the tavern would be bowing and grovelling before the former Clanmaster in subservience. The chains of traditional hierarchy were strung strongly around everyone. Not doing so would be seen as a grave insult, punishable by death.
After all, what were mere mortals in the face of all-powerful cultivators? And the former Clanmaster of the Stannerig clan was no doubt one of the most powerful in the entire region.
But here he was, surrounded by a large group of people who clearly didn’t care they were in the presence of vaunted company.
Rieren didn’t get to wonder about the social implications for long. Her eyes caught Gorint Malloh again, and this time, alarm spiked along her spine. His hand was at his knife, his grip tight and steady.
And she couldn’t sense a lick of Essence around him.
Of course. He would never be able to kill the former Clanmaster directly. He was far too powerful. Instead, better to wait till he was drunk and unsuspecting, till he was far away from home where no one could come to his defence when he fell. But how in the world had Gorint Malloh learned about his presence here? How long had been planning this for, and why?
Questions Rieren would never know the answer to if she intended to watch passively. So instead, she strode to the door, then opened it with a loud, resounding kick.
Every eye turned to her. Her paranoia rose like a serpent awakened from a deep slumber. Every instinct told her that she was preening like a stupid peacock. Every sense told her to hide, to go about this in a more subtle manner, to cease attracting all attention.
She kicked all those impulses until they were dead.
Rieren intended to stop Gorint Malloh. That meant being loud and surprising. It meant grabbing his attention and preventing him from doing anything lest he get caught. Which was exactly what her barging entrance into the tavern had caused.
“Who in the Abyss are you, little girl?” the barkeep asked. “And why in the Abyss are you kicking down my door? If there’s even a scratch, I’m making you pay for a new one.”
Rieren stepped forward, pleased to note that the former Clanmaster’s attention had turned to her. He was now viewing the entire tavern, no longer open to being sneaked upon and stabbed in the back. Rieren had already accomplished her goal.
Except for the fact that the entire tavern was now looking straight at her.
“Well,” the barkeep demanded. “The Abyss you want here?”
“She’s with me,” the former Stannerig Clanmaster said, then emphasized it with a hiccup. “Oh, and Gorint! I didn’t even notice you there. Barkeep, bring up the old cask.”
Telling herself that she had made the right decision, Rieren nodded at the former Clanmaster’s beckons and joined him for a drink.