Xsias was pleased.
The fear in the Sundai elders' spirits was delicious as they realized Nagal would remain afield. She watched as his chest blazed brighter than the arcing amber sun as he stood on a slight rise and refused to enter the Blessed One’s race. Beyond that, the Naga was more than fully recovered from the laming of his Meridians. His continued presence screamed for all to hear that he would seek vengeance against the Clan by unleashing his Flame Attunement upon their progeny.
Xsias positively reveled in the riot of emotions surrounding her. In particular, the Sundai Clan’s pain and anxiety had absolutely sated her Tetrahedral Focus of Agony.
Even better, the uneasy cease-fire between the Sundai, the Savoy Corp, and the Gandun Union to allow the Blessed One’s race to go on without advanced Cultivators of the three groups starting a brawl that turned Mwezi into rubble. The leaders of the three groups were casting increasingly menacing glances at each other while they inched closer and closer to open conflict with every second.
Xsias couldn’t have thought up a better villain than Nagal if she had tried. How the Fates came up with these pathetic creatures, Xsias was sure she didn’t know. However, her specialty was finding them and then ensuring they were enslaved to the Savoy Corp. to further its interests. The vampire broke from her revelry. She was here working, after all. The delectable flavor of helplessness from the Sundai near the peak of their Tetrahedral Focus was only icing on the top of her cake, but she did need to take care of business. The Gandun Union’s contract with Savory Corp. to ensure the slaughter of the next generation of the clan’s Cultivators was her reason for being here.
Why such animosity from the Gandun? Not that Xsias cared, but it seemed that two of Gusti Sundai’s brothers, Nenga and Komang, had stirred up quite the harrots’ nest in the galactic core against the much larger Gandun. In retaliation, the Union had hired the Savoy, and specifically—Xsias, to deliver the void wasp’s sting for them. There were no other extant contracts that Xsias was aware of, but two-hundred thousand standard rotations of experience with the Savoy convinced her this covert attack of the Gandun Union was merely an opening salvo. It was likely that in a handful of Ka nexus rotations, the Clan would be merely an unpleasant memory. The Sundai Clan’s demise was something Xsias was more than happy to deliver for one crucial reason, Gusti Sundai.
If he or any of his brothers advanced to the Octahedral level of Cultivation that they had been on the cusp of for the last two-thousand standard solar rotations, the power structure in the galaxy would be thrown into chaos. The Savoy could not allow that to happen. But this was tomorrow’s work. For now... the next generation of Sundai Cultivators needed to be expunged.
A smile threatened to split Xsias’s face and she schooled her glee as several Sundai elders ran to Gusti and demanded he act to stop the coming slaughter. Xsias’s pulse increased as she went from amused to positively aroused. The fervid feedback of Gusti’s anguish swirled around her as the Orangutan Affin had to hold himself back from destroying Nagal. And then having to subdue three of his own people to prevent their interference with the naga’s intent.
It was clear Gusti knew the far-reaching consequences for Balance if they interfered with Karma’s ongoing opera. Not only for whoever intervened, but for the entire Clan. Gusti had obviously been so seriously concerned that he hadn’t even stopped Nagal weeks prior when he could have, unwilling even then to take the risks of unbalancing this Karmic locus. The woven lashes of Reality converged here in a very pronounced way. Even to Xsias, who was several degrees less sensitive than Gusti, it was evident that Nagal was a fateful Actor. An Agent of Chaos. A player in a show that needed to run to its conclusion. Trying to prevent this Intended Fate would only make the repercussions worse... for all involved. Of that, both Xsias and Gusti were in an unvoiced agreement.
With the pacification of the three elders, the susurrus from the Sundai Clan quickly died down. Gusti neatly laid them down in a row behind him without acknowledging the looks of betrayal from those remaining. The Clan turned away from Gusti to stare again in vain at the waiting Nagal.
Gusti used the distraction and leveled a dangerous look at Xsias. She cocked an eyebrow at him. Certainly not here and now?
The pain on his face as he turned away from her indicated that he also agreed with her thoughts on the escalation to violence between them before the qualifier’s conclusion.
Smiling pleasantly to the back of Gusti’s boiling figure, Xsias readied for the conclusion of the circus before her. The Clan elders were entirely correct. It was a foregone conclusion that singly Attuned Cultivators—even a cluster of fifty, would never be able to stop a doubly Attuned one. Especially one boosted offensively by the fire treasure Xsias had supplemented Nagal with.
Sitting back and savoring the delicious misery of the Sundai, Xsias let it fill her Meridians to bursting. She then stood back and waited for the Sundai children to be annihilated.
*****
Gusti’s long, simian toes were grinding the stone beneath his feet to powder as he eyeballed the Savoy vampire. His Karmic vision showed him she was firmly linked to Nagal with a sopping, bloody-black thread of dominance. She was responsible for Nagal’s recovery and the entire current situation.
Silently binding himself, Gusti vowed that no matter how this played out... when he got his hands on Xsias... the outcome would be unavoidable.
Until then, Xsias would have to wait. For right now, Gusti needed to stand here and continue showing an adamant face for the Clan, nd, if necessary, an uncompromising hand as well. Only then could they all get through this knotted snag of Karmic threads centering around Josh, Sen, and Nagal.
Gusti wasn’t precisely sure how everyone had gotten pulled into this mess, but his Cosmic-Essence Attunement had been flaring since he first encountered Josh and Sen. It had erupted like a solar-mass ejection when they were in the same room with the Naga.
Moreover, his Tetrahedral Focus of Shaman, literally screamed at him about the entwined nature of the three young Cultivators’ Fates. If anyone tried to interfere in the qualifying race, much less the confrontation between these three, Reality’s Balance would swing back immediately and irrevocably. Whoever stood in its way would be crushed.
This level of backlash would shatter the Sundai Clan. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. How would it? It was impossible for Gusti to tell. He was no Diviner. Not yet. Only when he advanced to the Octahedral level of Cultivation and if he chose to follow the divergent Shamanic path of Time-Space-Karma-Fate Conjunction would he be able to know the how of it.
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For now? All he knew was the Balancing backswing of Karma for any that interfered in the confrontation below would be bad. Bad in a ‘kill you now, kill you later, and kill you every day for the rest of the Iteration’s existence, kind of way’.
The only thing to do was let it play out. To do that, Gusti needed to trust those two peculiar humans. The prodigies, with their extraordinary Bond. He knew the kids were good. There were no two ways about it. No five of the singly attuned Sundai youth were a match for either of them. But... against a doubly-Attuned offense-oriented Naga? Even Gusti was having trouble seeing how the Karmic ties to the iteration could allow Balance to impose such a terminal Reality upon the two young human’s. They were both Dharmic and pretty decent guys despite not knowing the difference between a bovina and their rear ends.
What had they done, or would do that was so damning as to force a showdown between them and a beast like Nagal? …And how could their fates be so entwined with the Sundai Clan from the get-go of their arrival on Mwezi that if Gusti or anyone in the Clan were to intervene it would spell their end as well?
Gusti sucked through his front teeth and again looked uselessly up past the banded striations of Barroo-7 to the Heavens beyond. I have no clue why any of this was true.
Gusti knew that time was not linear and this more than anything shaped what the non-karmically sensitive described as ‘fate.’ Even a newborn started its life with the Karmic ties that Ballance shaped the being’s reality as the wheel of time spun on. It was the choices and actions the individual made while the wheel spun that altered ones Ballance imposed Reality, and created the tangents in our existence that gave rise to the never ending iterations of the multiverse… Everything he was thinking was true and undeniable. Still none of it made it at all clear how two singly attuned Cultivators who despite a strong fundamental understanding of the physical iteration and a solid foundational understanding of Essence application…were little more than a couple of yahoos…
Gusti scrubbed his face with his long-fingered hand. How can they ever hope to match something like Nagal?
It was a simple question of raw power, and not an indictment on or a lack of confidence in the two kids’ wills. Without a doubt, they would show up and do their part. Gusti knew it in his mind and metaphysically as the Clan’s Shaman, but just as much if not more as their friend. It didn’t take a deep search of his feelings for the Orangutan-Affin to confirm that he truly trusted Josh and Sen—almost from their first meeting.
It was true that Gusti had reflected a few times in the past weeks that trusting so quickly was generally not his nature. Too many times in his six-hundred-thousand standard cycles, appearances weren’t what they had originally seemed. Even when things were what they looked like, over the millennia simple, very slight deviations in character that one could miss at a first meeting made even the closest of friends, or brothers, end up with divergent Fates. Gusti had seen and suffered these truths too many times to be taken in by a good story and a kind demeanor.
Yet he had believed what his astral inspection had shown him about Josh and Sen’s ties to fate. They were good kids. They did come from a long way off, likely originating from another iteration unless he missed his guess. And because of this distance from their present and their place of integration to the present, it was likely that they had some ties and points of connection that he was not able to fully perceive and inspect. But what Gusti could see he liked and trusted. It was in that trust that he had acted on his Shamanic perceptions to bring the two boys into the Clan.
Gusti tilted his head to the side as he looked back on it from the present, It was almost as if he had gotten a glimpse of what his Foresight Cultivation Focus would be like on the other side of his long held back his Octahedral advancement. The insight on the two of them was so clear! It had felt like his skills had even reached the level of a Diviner, which would be unheard of… But regardless, Gusti had believed what he sensed and felt about Josh and Sen. And he had done everything in his power to position the two of them between the Clan’s kids and Nagal. Gusti had gone so far toward that goal he’d felt the Karmic veils straining at his warnings and interventions. The course before them all was so set that even the recommendations he had made the previous night to the clan’s kids had pinged Reality’s ties like the straining mooring lines of an anchored ship in a squall. It was clear that these three, Josh, Sen, and Nagal, were meant for a confrontation, here and now. They would somehow sharpen each other in a way that was desired by powers far beyond the strength of any of the current players he could see.
The slow tread of heavy steps came from behind him and Gusti glanced over his shoulder, knowing what he would find there.
A sigh escaped him as he shot a narrowed glance at the hulking figure coming his way. “You’re a headache I don’t need right now, Jorn.” Heedless of the warning, Jorng’a continued his march up to Gusti. He stopped, looked at Nagal, and then back at Gusti.
“I see him. Plain as day... just like the rest of you. I haven’t been suddenly struck blind.”
“Could’ve fooled me, Gusti...” Jorng’a took a deep breath and pressed his lips together, trying to maintain his temper, or his nerve, or both. “We’re not going to let that overinflated moron roast our kids because of the iterational quirk of birth-striation that gave this clueless bully of a naga double attunement. It’s crystal clear you won’t let us act, so what are you going to do about it?”
Gusti unveiled his Core and let it radiate. It brightly shone over the Clan, the leaders of the Savoy, the Gandun, Nagal, a kilometer away—and even that spiritually risen undead bloodsucker who was soon to be a dead-undead bloodsucker. All of them flinched and turned from his peak-Tetrahedral strength.
Gusti then faced Jorng’a with eyes as unmoving as Xsias’s. He spoke slowly and tensely so there would be no mistake as he stared the massive Bison Affin down. “I’ve already done what needed doin’. Watch it play out so you can call me a genius when it’s over.” Gusti raised his eyebrows without blinking and stared up at the massive Bison Affin. “Are we clear?”
Setting his jaw, the muscular bovine was clearly unwilling to stand down.
“...I can see it’s a waste of my breath, but you have quite the strength to gain until you reach the day you’ll be able to force into question my actions, Jorn...”
Pressure waves seemed to collapse around Jorng’a as he reached for his Tetrahedral Cultivation Focus, Gravitational Mass. Jorng’a exerted enough force to double the density of a quarter-galactic ton of neutronium as he strained against Gusti’s strength for several seconds... and then... Jorng’a’s giant eyes rolled into the back of his skull and he staggered from the pressure. Clearly he had lost the pissing contest.
After a few seconds, Jorng’a started catching his breath. Then he nodded. Gusti wasn’t going to give up on this and Jorng’a was simply no match for him. All he or the rest of the Elders could do was trust him.
With hooded eyelids, Gusti recognized the acceptance from Jorng’a and through him—all the rest of the Clan, save the few yahoos he already had to subdue.
Gusti nodded to Jorng’a and looked back to the small hill Nagal was standing on. Some of the Clan’s kids were nearing it, about ten kilometers away. Despite his confident facade, Gusti knew that everything he had done so far might only amount to achieving the lesser of several evils facing the Clan…and the ‘lesser evil’ was not always a good friend to have.
Fates, I’m betting everything!
He needed to be right about this. Gusti hadn’t been wrong about the risks. Merely mentioning Nagal to Josh and Sen six weeks ago had stretched Karma until it had groaned. Bringing it up again at the strategy meeting last night had made Reality’s ties so taut they sang with the tension. Was there more I could have, should have done—No, Gusti had prepared them as much as he could. The rest was up to them.
Everyone in attendance intensified their focus as the first runners approached Nagal’s position. The first to reach the naga were two unaffiliated runners that had sprinted all out from the start.
Gusti closed his eyes and pressed his lips into a solid line as he realized these two were either too dumb to see or too desperate to care about the danger the four armed monster represented. Either way, if there had been any doubt about Nagal’s intentions, they were rapidly laid to rest.
Quick, sidewinding flicks of Nagal’s abdomen surged him forward hundreds of meters. Almost instantly closing the distance to the now back-peddling runners. It was obvious to all that their retreat was too little, too late. Nagal grabbed the closest one’s head and simply smashed it to a pulp between his thickly muscled hands. The runner’s four legs and two arms spasmed as the Naga grabbed one of the loose limbs and swung his now dead body flaccid around his head like a lasso. The naga then flung the dead racer to crash into the body of the second runner, a plant-form spirit being covered in green and blue leaves that had been sliding along the ground on a series of rapidly moving subterranean roots. The two bodies collided and rolled in a tangled mess of broken limbs as well as broken limbs and branches.
Coiling his abdomen rapidly, Nagal surged over the downed bodies and crushed them into a thick black-green smear on the rocky ground under his scales. He then tilted his head and tasted the air with a steaming, forked tongue. Seemingly sensing what he was looking for, he shot across the rocky sand at supersonic speeds to mow down another unaffiliated arachnid runner who had tried to take advantage of the distraction the first two died to create. With chunks of the spider still falling to the ground, Nagal lashed his way back and settled on the low rise he had started from.
A maniacal grin spread across the Naga’s face as the first members of the Clan’s column came into sight two kilometers away around a house-sized boulder.