Shit, shit, shit, I cursed.

I thought about trying to toss the core, but we were already too close.

I wished I had thought to climb over the wall earlier or tossing it over the wall at least. Not that I could have scaled the barely twelve-foot wall in my condition, much less with Mu Lin. And forget tossing it. I honestly had just forgotten I even had the damn thing! And who would have expected an actual imperial guard to show up like this? We’d lost a group of nearly ten cultivators before and it took the enforcers over a month to show up just to sign the paperwork.

I was beginning to wonder if my struggles against the Dynasty was about to start in earnest.

“Mu Lin? Chun?” Sumatra rushed forward ahead of the Enforcers, both his face and continence dark with rage. “How in nine hells did you two make it back? What happened? Where are the clients?”

I couldn’t tell if he was putting on a show for the Imperial Guard or not. The guard in question was dark skinned and looked to be in his early thirties. He didn’t look like one to mess about with either. Looking back to Sumatra, I realized that I could actually sense the rage coming from him. Or was it truly rage? It looked like rage but as I sampled the energy itself it, tasted? different. It was actually more like…fear.

“Yes, indeed…” The Imperial Guard stepped forward, casually asserting his authority over Sumatra. “Tell me what transpired. Where are the cultivators who hired this excursion?”

“The three Fire Bird members,” Mu Lin began, “They a—”

“All died,” I spoke over her, giving her thighs a quick squeeze, signally for her to keep quiet. “The off-worlders too. Mu Lin’s group came across a Rapling den with a broodmother. Me and the other client happened to be close enough to try to assist. There had to be over a hundred of them. None of the cultivators survived.”

I tried to control my speeding pulse and prayed Mu Lin knew how to keep a poker face. Not that they even played poker anymore. I checked on Sumatra and as I suspected his ‘rage’ turned quickly to a look of confusion and then suspicion.

“How the hell did you both survive then?” he said.

I glanced at the guard. There was only one thing I knew that would convince him of my fantastical story. “We survived…because we are weak…”

Both their eyes shot open then.

“…and because we are cowards.”

“Explain,” the guard demanded.

“The cultivators stayed to fight,” I said. “The monk with them even protected us, but when he got us to safety, we both fled fearing for our lives.”

The guard seemed to consider this for a moment and then nodded. “So, you abandoned your posts and your clients?” He then huffed out a snort through his nose. “Typical. You natives truly are spineless and weak.”

I released a sigh within. He’d bought it.

“Also incompetent,” he added and then turned to Sumatra. “How is it that your handlers led a group into such dangers? Have you not trained them in the study of rankings?”

It was Sumatra’s turn to come up with a lie on the spot now.

“It was the monk,” he said without missing a beat. “The off-worlder. He came looking for enough spirit stones to breakthrough to the sacred soul realm. Mu Lin, she did her job. I’m sure of it. She gave them what they wanted. Ain’t that right, Mu Lin?”

I nudged her subtly again and she spoke in a quivering voice. “Y-yes. They wanted a challenge.”

I noticed the Guard’s countenance shift and I quickly covered for her with another lie. “It was the broodmother. That’s what changed everything. Right, Mu Lin? What was it, a C class right?”

“Yes,” she said, sounding a bit more confident. “It was a C class together with the hundred or so D classes combined. That would have been the equivalent of an A Class encounter. It was clearly unexpected. That’s what shifted the battle.”

Sumatra’s poker face was on now as he gave a nod. “Cursed luck is all.”

“Where did this take place?”

“Beneath the underpasses,” I answered first, giving a general area that was within the range of our travels.

He raised a brow.

“Sorry, the ruins that are about ten miles or so to the South East.”

I had used the old earth term purposefully to throw him off, following up with something even more vague.

“And you can show me this area?” he asked.

“Not right now, of course,” I said, hinting up at the Bloodmoon. “But perhaps in a few weeks when I heal, sure.”

I was glad that I had picked Raplings now. They were a transitory breed. If I did have to follow through with that ‘tour’ of the crime scene, I could simply claim the broodmother must have moved on.

The guard didn’t look satisfied, but he didn’t seem too suspicious either.

“Search them and let them go. I suppose the wounds they have received is punishment enough for their failure.” He then turned to Sumatra. “For you, however. I shall be submitting a review of your records to the Warden. There have been far too many mishaps of late.”

Sumatra gave a bow of humility before the guard. “Yes, of course.”

My heart pounded in my throat as the group of enforcers approached us. I lowered Mu Lin from my back and a trio of them quickly began poking and prodding us while a couple more began rummaging through our backpacks. I wished that I knew some kind of berserker technique to swallow up the fear rising in my stomach, because I was afraid it would soon show on my face.

“Hey, take it easy,” I said with an exaggerated wince. “These are fresh wounds.”

“Shut up!”

The prodding continued, getting dangerously close to my sling. I tried to keep the core pinned between my elbow and my body as inconspicuously as possible. The enforcer searching me was just about to start poking inside it, when another one of them called out, “What’s this?”

The enforcer in question was holding the glowing metal orb in his hand.

Shit, I thought. I didn’t know which was worse: finding the orb or finding the core.

I dropped my jaw to try and make something up when a voice called out.

“Hey, you found another one. Congrats.”

Everyone turned to see who had spoken.

It was Lee.

The somewhat tall, red haired kid with freckles and a lazy smile winked at me, encouraging me to play along with whatever he was concocting.

“Yeah, I did,” I said. “What luck huh?”

“And what is it?” the guard asked.

“It’s one of those a Bocce balls, right?” Lee said and I nodded to him in confirmation, playing along, even though I had no idea what a Bocce ball was.

Lee turned to the guard and gave a small bow. “Apologies. It’s an ancient game from our world. You need a bunch of them to play. Chun here has been collecting them.”

Thank goodness I didn’t say anything stupid. I forgot that to everyone else this thing still just looked like a shiny metal ball. And thank goodness for Lee. I owed him a solid for sure with that save.

The guard rolled the orb in his palm a few seconds before shaking his head with a scowl. “It is no wonder your kind is so weak. Wasting time playing games.” He tossed the orb back into my backpack. “Get them out of my sight.”

* * *

We got about a mile away from the gatepost before the tornado of questions began.

“What the hell was that, Chun?” Mu Lin demanded, who now rode on Lee’s back instead of mine. “You had me lying to an imperial guard!”

“Whoa, you guys lied?” Lee said, cracking a grin. “That’s kind of nuts. What did you lie about?”

“You don’t want to know,” I said.

Lee probably wouldn’t care anyway. He never took anything too seriously. It was one of the reasons I liked the guy so much.

“Why do you say that?” Mu Lin shouted. “And why did you stop me from telling them what really happened? Those men were dangerous. The Fire Bird Sect needs to take responsibility for what their members did!”

“What did they do?” Lee asked.

“Nothing, don’t worry about it.”

“They didn’t do ‘nothing’! They tried to—”

“Okay stop,” I said, coming to a physical stop as well.

We were still out in the middle of the fields and after dark so hopefully there wasn’t anyone in earshot, but I lowered my voice anyway. “Alright Lee, for your sake this is what happened. Those three firebird members killed the monk and then stole his core. Then they tried to kill Mu Lin to cover it up.”

“No shit?” Lee said, his eyes widening.

“Yeah, but then I led them into a Rapling nest and they all died.”

“Oh, so that part was true?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” I lied.

“That’s crazy.”

“But the main point is this. They seemed to know Sumatra pretty well. They were talking about him and stuff.”

“When?” Mu Lin said. “I don’t remember that.”

“You were knocked out by then. Anyway, I don’t think Sumatra was expecting us to come back, Mu Lin.” I then added for emphasis. “Any of us. You noticed the first thing he said when he saw us? ‘How in the nine hells did we make it back?’ Plus I don’t think he was expecting the imperial guard or the enforcers to be there either. He was pissing his pants just as much as we were just now.”

“I still don’t like the idea of us lying to an imperial guard, Chun. We could get into big trouble for this! And I don’t need anything that’s going to mess up my chances of getting into the academy. Or that will get me thrown in prison!”

I had to remember that not everyone hated and mistrusted the cultivators like I did. Most didn’t, in fact—all of them taken too young to remember life before the attack. Or what little they did remember was wiped clean by years of social reprograming. To Mu Lin, the Dynasty wasn’t an oppressor, it was a savior that was protecting us from the Bloodmoon and giving us a path to immortality if we worked hard enough.

Her goals and aspirations were far different than mine. Maybe even opposed.

“Hey,” I said. “We were lying more to Sumatra than to the guard. We can’t let him think that we know too much. Chances are he was in on that deal. Maybe all these botched tours have been his doing. That Off-worlder has no clan or Sect to back him up here. If he goes missing, whose to know any better? Or even care?”

“We know,” Mu Lin said. “And we should care. If they are doing something illegal like this, then we need to expose it.”

I sighed. “Mu Lin, there’s no other witnesses besides us and the bodies will be eaten before morning. No evidence. You think they’ll believe the word of two Terran commoners against the likes of the entire Fire Bird Sect?”

Plus, I have the damn core on me, so that wouldn’t look too good, now would it? I almost added. But I wasn’t going to put my friends in any more danger than they already were. The fewer people who knew about both the core and the orb the better.

I guess my suffering in solitude is beginning already, I thought with chagrin.

Mu Lin frowned but seemed to accept the logic after a bit. “So what should we do then?”

“We do nothing,” I said. “We take what really happened to our graves. So long as Sumatra doesn’t find out that we know, we’ll be safe. Plus, I think he’ll have his hands full with the authorities now anyway. By the time we’re fit to get back to work, hopefully this will all have blown over. Just be careful taking and excursions involving any off-worlders, okay Lee?”

“You bet.”

“And thanks,” I said. “For covering for me. How the hell did you know about that game? Is it real?”

“Yeah, it’s real,” he said. “Pretty fun too. So what is it anyway? Really.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I just thought it looked kind of cool.”

Lee stared me a moment before laughing out loud. “Seriously? You really are an idiot, Chun.”

I grinned and laughed with him.

Being a Chun was a far better explanation than the truth for sure.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get home.”