“Oh shit,” Willow said and glanced at Leopold. Leopold looked just as shocked as her. No strategic reconnaissance, no looking around. He just went straight up to the front door and knocked. Well, she supposed that Jeremy knew these people better than her. Maybe that was the right way to play things?
The heavily carved wooden doors gave a jolt that rang like a bell. They swung back in their ornamented gate, highlighting gold inlays in the bright sun. As the double doors widened, Willow saw there were cultivators on the other side.
One, two, three. Five. Ten. A group of ten cultivators robed in orange and brown with the insignia of the Driving Rain sect looking like ten little Sun Geons. Willow swallowed thickly at the resurging memory of the battle.
Jeremy spoke with the cultivator at the center, who looked a little bulkier than the others. Willow wondered if he was their leader. It seemed so strange that in this place you could become physically more powerful than someone else, as opposed to knowing more magic or having more inscripted weapons.
Cultivator, it turned out, was a very good word for what these people were.
The man listened imperiously to Jeremy at the gate, smirked a little, then spat a response back at him.
“What’d he say,” Willow asked.
“Well, I asked him if we could peacefully look in their library for matters regarding meridian disruption, but it appears as if he doesn’t think we’re worthy.”
The lead cultivator went off on a long bent of yelling and gesturing between all three of them in turn. His face grew red.
“Now he’s accusing us of being interlopers,” Jeremy said.
Jeremy responded in a calmly, pointed to the highest tower in the compound behind the door, then slid his hand across his throat. That sign didn’t need translation, because Willow gasped just as the cultivators took fighting stances.
“What in the hells did you say to him,” Willow asked, falling back to her own beginner’s stance and stroking the spell capsule with her essence, ready for the first sign of violence. She felt Leopold do the same as essence flared from the cultivators.
“I simply told him we’re not,” Jeremy said. Then he jabbed his fingers toward his eyes, then toward the lead cultivator’s.
Willow sighed and broke the spell capsule. Leopold did the same. The cultivators leapt as one.
Jeremy casually reached up and blinded the first cultivator who’d thought to leap over him and head straight toward Willow and Jeremy. The man curled up mid-air and began screaming, his eyes leaking blood and fluid. Willow rocketed off at an angle to flank the group while Leopold held out a capsule and prepared to fire.
A brief flare of essence from Jeremy brought him into the midst of the group where he laid about with his bare hands. Cultivators exploded at his touch, tearing into halves and quarters to splatter against the gateway. Willow changed targets instinctively, knowing who was the most dangerous opponent here.
By the time Willow ricocheted off the gate into the midst of the carnage, the battle was over. Jeremy whipped his hand through empty air to splatter blood on the sect’s stone-flagged pathway. Leopold was frozen in place outside the gates, still not having fired off his capsule. Willow turned back her acceleration.
“You… killed them,” Willow said. “You killed them all.”
“It was us or them, Willow,” Jeremy said. “In this place it’s kill or be killed. The sooner you realize that, the more likely it is you’ll survive your little trip here. And the more likely that you’ll live to solve your problem back home.”
Willow gritted her teeth. “Let’s go,” she said, and walked into the walled compound which was even now resounding with ringing gongs, cultivators pouring out of every doorway and window.
🜛
Willow couldn’t read their language, but Jeremy could, so she let him take the library and she and Leopold climbed to the highest room in the highest tower. Apparently that was where the sect master lived—used to live—as the living pinnacle of the mountain.
The beautiful interiors of the buildings calmed her. Sprays of flower buds perfumed the air. Candlelight cast everything in a warm glow. With the magnificent foreign interiors, she could almost forget the carnage outside. Leopold’s hands shook, but he was trying to keep it together too.
The wooden tower stairs creaked slightly as they made their way up. Windows with wooden crossbeams but no paper screens looked out on the compound below, but Willow averted her gaze. The sect’s colors had been orange and brown, but now the courtyard was splattered in red./
How many had she killed? One, two, she took the steps and counted her memories. At some point they became a blur. Leopold had even killed a few with well-placed shots. She’d guarded him when the cultivators seemed to realize that he was their weak link. He couldn’t move like Willow or Jeremy, and stone skin could only do so much, especially against being thrown off a mountain. He stayed back and fired ranged shots while Willow got her hands dirty.
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They were still tacky with blood and hair. Leopold was clean, and in a way she felt that that was right. He’d always been pure, untouched by the madness that had followed her since arriving in Durum. She supposed he didn’t really deserve to be on this journey with her, not when it led to this. But they were married now, and he would follow her anywhere.
After a seemingly endless run of stairs they finally reached a door. It was carved with flower blossoms and several characters that Willow couldn’t read. She tried the latch, but it was locked.
She tripped it from the other side and swung the door open.
What awaited her was the exact room she’d sent her portal to all those weeks ago. The paper screened windows, stumpy candles, low tables. Even the floor mats looked the same. She wondered if anyone had been in Sun Geon’s chambers since he’d come through the portal.
She turned in a circle, trying to find the exact view she’d seen, when she stopped at what she saw halfway around. On one side of the room was a huge array of what looked like metrology equipment. Huge wrapped wires or hoses connected large wooden boxes to cylindrical devices arrayed in a star-shape, all pointed inward toward an oval of empty space.
Turning directly around, she saw the exact scene she’d seen when she opened the portal. Those devices had been arrayed around the portal when she’d opened it for Sun Geon to pass through.
“Well, shit.”
🜛
Sun Geon’s chambers had their own washbasin and running water, little more than ice-cold, but the freezing water helped to shock Willow’s senses back after her revelation. And it helped her scrub the blood from her hands and under her fingernails. Leopold helped her after her initial try, when she was sunk deep in thought, by scrubbing her face and the dots of blood on her robes.
“I’m not sure that’s going to come out,” he said, fussing over a particularly large patch of blood. He took her outer robe and dunked it in the ice-cold water while she went and inspected the device. Opening the wooden boxes showed crystals hooked directly into the wires through some method of artifice she had no knowledge of. Even though she’d never seen such a device in her life, it was clear what its purpose was.
To analyze the portal she opened in Sun Geon’s chamber and send that data somewhere else.
How long had they been planning on getting some idiot to open a portal into their country? Sun Lin would have seen portal magic while watching Andrew work. She must’ve thought her chance had finally come when Willow killed him. Here was someone she could convince to open a portal and they’d never suspect why. Up until now it seemed like the only thing keeping the Celestial Empire from conquering her own land was the vast distance that separated them. Apparently that barrier might now be broken.
“Shit,” she said again. Leopold worked heating magic on the robe in the corner to dry it, and she heard a slight pounding on the stairs outside. A moment later Jeremy came through the door carrying a couple of scrolls as thick as a grown man’s thigh and a few smaller ones. Underneath them all was a polished, latched box.
“Did you find anything,” Willow asked. Leopold handed her the steaming dry robe and she shrugged into it. The stain was still there.
“A few scrolls on meridians. I think they should be able to get me up to snuff with the theory anyway. I grabbed everything I could.”
“Thanks,” Willow said.
“And,” Jeremy said, dropping the larger scrolls and holding out the smaller ones. “Some interesting correspondence.”
Willow unrolled the scrolls and shook her head. “I can’t read this.”
“Of course. Sometimes I forget,” Jeremy took the scroll back and cleared his throat. “It seems the emperor is arranging a tournament and has invited the three strongest members of the Driving Rain Sect to attend.”
“And that’s important to us why,” Leopold asked.
“Tournaments are no joke here,” Jeremy said. “They’re always put on for a purpose. Usually to herald the start of some new campaign. Or invasion.”
Willow’s stomach clenched. “You don’t think—”
“I do. I think that’s exactly why he’s putting it on, but he doesn’t yet know his man on the other side’s dead. How they’re planning on solving the transportation problem—”
“Well, we figured that out,” Willow said and pointed back at the constellation of sensor equipment. “They were recording when I opened the portal to bring Sun Geon to Asche.”
Jeremy went over to the devices and prodded them for a few minutes, then shrugged. “If that’s true, then we have even less time than you thought. He’s going to recruit the strongest fighters in the Empire for his invasion, and they’ll be selected at this tournament.”
“And,” Jeremy said, a smile creeping onto his mouth, “he’ll be there himself.”
“Is that not normal,” Willow asked. “For the emperor to oversee his own tournament?”
“Not when its this far from the capital,” Jeremy said. “Over a thousand li. He’d have to travel for days. Or, if he’s got what you say he does…”
“It’s a test,” Willow said. “Testing out his new ability.”
“Bingo.”
“I don’t see how this affects us,” Leopold cut in. “Let them have their tournament. We have to get back home and shut that gate, now. We can deal with the cultivators if they ever decide to invade. Maybe they won’t. It took so much energy just to open the portal between Asche and here for a few moments, I can’t see how they could manage it without someone like you.”
“People like Willow are a dime a dozen here,” Jeremy said. “Well, not a dime a dozen, but she’s not the strongest. Not by a long shot. I’d place her squarely in the profound realm on strength alone from what I can sense. It’s her other abilities that make her difficult to deal with. Those are surprises that any cultivator could learn to deal with if given enough time.”
“That doesn’t change anything,” Leopold pleaded. “We’ll deal with them when they attack, if they ever do.”
“When they attack, those strongest fighters will have been given special pills that will make them even stronger than they were before. When they attack, Willow won’t stand a chance. I wouldn’t either. No one would.”
“Then…,” Leopold said, realization turning to shock in his eyes. “You’re not seriously suggesting—”
“Yes, I am,” Jeremy said, and knelt down to the box he’d brought up. “I don’t know how these will affect you with your different magic system, but if we’re going to nip this in the bud you both need to be stronger.”
Breaking the latch and opening the box, the essence within was nearly overpowering to Willow. It was like looking at a set of white-hot metal ingots. Willow dampened her second sight and took another look.
The box was inlaid with silver on the inside. On a pillow sat six small polished spheres. They were absolutely chock full of essence.
“Spiritual pills,” Jeremy said, and smiled. “The fastest ticket to advancement on this side of the ocean. And I’ll teach you how to use them.”