[The roots of the Tree are rotting, the qi that reaches the Crown growing thinner with each year. When the Court of Immortals shook the tree and sent the realms scattering below, starving them, exposing them to the Void-winds, they invited an invisible sickness that has been crawling across the realm ever since.
[For a forest to heal, sometimes it must burn. You hold the first of the nine Anti-Light Scriptures, a manual penning the words of the Prophet of the Fire, a manual to guide your way to starting the cycle of rebirth. Beware — ]
Interface read the next two pages of the manuscript to me. We had made it another two pages into the book hidden within the technique’s Truth. It was mostly a history lesson, so far. I paged through the normal words in the book — those were a history lesson, too, now that I read them, talking about preparing for the darkest days, and always being ready to survive hardship.
The plain half of the book gave instructions for rebuilding a society, and a technique that focused on changing me rather than using qi. A technique that would continue working even if there was no qi left.
“So are there four versions of this book? For each technique? And then eight others?” I asked.
[Or the book printed on the pages is just a convenient disguise.] Interface said. It sounded disturbed.
My bedroom had a moss carpet, and I rose from it with a stretch. Water channeled from the spring constantly flowed at an opening in the room. I washed myself leisurely before reporting for guard duty again.
The captain ran me through a new rotation of sparring, but only for the normal two hours. I was barely sweating by the end, but I left a half dozen goat men sweating and bruised, despite them being farther into the first cultivation realm than me. The Hellfire augments to my body, even passively, gave me a large physical advantage.
“Do you know where the Mystic Mountain is?” The captain asked.
“The…” I looked back and forth. On either side of the valley, the edges that led up toward the top were visible. The top of both featured the distant walls that loomed across the horizon and penned in the prison, and infrastructure ringed below those, great staircases ascending either side.
“Not an actual mountain.” The captain said. “Valar!” He shouted.
Valar ran up. She was wearing armor today.
“Yes, captain?” She asked, half panting. She had clearly been sparring.
“Take the shift at the Mountain today.” The Captain said. “Bring K’Thre with you.”
“Yes sir!” Valar said. She eyed me curiously.
We left the main compound of the Shattered Mountain clan, Valar leading me into the streets after a quick stop to grab a spear — a real one. The weapon wasn’t normal. It looked like wood bark, like a single huge thorn from a plant the size of a house.
“I bought it from the prison.” Valar said, noticing me staring. “It’s reactive to earth element qi.”
A look of focus overcame her, and then the end of the lance sprung forward, the handle elongated just a bit for a single second before crawling back like a spring.
“They sell you weapons?” I asked, scanning the street. People moved out of our way, or even paused to salute Valar. The Shattered Mountain’s influence seemed to stretch across the entire town.
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“Yeah, for stone.” She said.
I really needed to check out the dungeon shop.
The houses in the finer center area of the city were built out of masoned bricks, cut and mortared together. The windows almost never featured glass. The layout of the city seemed like it was slapdash, buildings piled up next to or on top of each other without planning.
The city was slowly growing upward.
We ducked into alleys so tight that we had to push by people who slept on the street. Maybe the road was wider, once. Doors opened to stores and warehouses sometimes recessed into the walls of the buildings around them, like they had been constantly expanding. Some didn’t have doors at all, just guards or salesmen leering out the openings.
It was one of those entrances where we reached Mystic Mountain. People piled up outside the door, leaning against the wall in a slightly wider section of the street. Some smoked, filling the alley with a pungeant odor. Valar led us inside.
It was half restaurant and half bar, packed wall to wall through an open door, and full of noise. People drank or ate on stained stone tables while sitting on stone benches or stools that were hardly more than big rocks.
Goat-man servers bustled about, providing clay plates of food piled with meat, bowls of stew, and cups of sloshing liquid that made the room smell sour. None of the patrons paid us any mind as we stepped in. Unlike the Shattered Mountain’s compound, there were dozens of different kinds of people here.
Many resembled cousins of animals I had seen or read about, while others took completely alien shapes. Some of the people here didn’t resemble humans or tieflings or any species I was familiar with at all.
Valar led us to the back, walking behind the counter without anyone offering a second glance.
“Valar!” Another goat-person, clearly a guard, greeted us as we stepped into a wide kitchen warehouse.
“How is it today? Kick anyone out yet?”
“Just a couple drunks!” The goat man said. They both bleated, a mutual laugh that was far too loud inside the store.
“C’mon! Shifts over!” The goat man who greeted Nalar shouted back into the warehouse.
A second guard poked a head around a corner, horns hanging with a single battle trophy, before jogging up.
They both slapped me on the shoulder, jogging by to leave the restaurant.
Valar started patrolling the inside of the warehouse. It wasn’t very big; it only took us a few minutes to walk from one side to the other. There were glowing runes in the center surrounding an area that chilled, foggy air rolled out of.
[Interesting. A long term magical enchanment, but sustained entirely by reacting qi instead of an anchor for artifice.] Interface said, observing as we walked by.
“What is that?” I pointed.
“Hm?” Valar asked. “Oh. The freezer.”
The rows of storage in the cold area were filled with meat that was covered in little pieces of ice like frozen water.
“Hells, I see that much. How is it so cold?”
“Oh, it’s a formation.” Nalar replied. “Very expensive technique to learn and master. Requires expending something that contains Truth.”
“Like the manuscripts?” I asked, remembering the one I had that reacted to light from dawn, or Nalaar’s which seemed to grow plants on their own.
“Yeah, but that would be even more expensive. Think more like… a sword that someone used for fifty years to cut people would have accumulated sword Truth.” Nalar said.
“You can get truth for sword?” I asked. Ice made sense. Earth, light, those all made sense. Sword? Human’s made swords! Or goat people, I guessed.
[I wonder how obscure the concepts for Truth get.] Interface said, apparently agreeing with me. [Can we find a Gun truth? Or a a Magic truth?]
After a quick patrol of the warehouse and Nalar greeting the very busy kitchen staff, we took up a seat on a broken piece of furniture in the back. The entire warehouse was chilly from the ice formation. I rubbed my arms.
Nalar seemed fine with the cold, but I didn’t have a coat of fur.
“So they really just pay us to stand around?”
“Not to stand around.” Nalar said. “We’re here in case of trouble.”
It was a few hours before trouble found us. One of the serving staff, more human than goat, burst into the back room. She walked up to us, her face entirely human up until her hair, which fell away in goat like fur and ears, and the horns hanging over her head. Hers featured no trophies.
“What is it?” Nalar asked, noticing her distress before I did.
The woman, who had an entirely human face, bleated. I found it distressing.
“There are Iron Gut clan members sitting down at the edge of the room.” The woman said.
Nalar and I shared a look.
“They’re just sitting down?” I asked.
“Menacingly!” The goat woman said.
Nalar sighed, grabbing her spear.
“We’ll talk to them.” She said. “Remind us that we have guards here.
Maybe this wouldn’t end in a fight.