And so did fair-haired Tyche roam far and wide.

Cast loose from her mother’s watchful eye, hither and thither she went.

From sunlit shore, to starless sea, from icy dark to burning lands,

Until at last she found her path did bring her to an eastern plain.

There, where snow capped mountains pierced the sky,

Where amid golden fields and flowering valleys many destinies were born,

Where life-giving waters flowed from mountain to the sea,

Where savage heat, an echo of star-setting Helios, did linger still.

[There], did long-sorrowing Tyche, find her home once more,

Upon the banks of those great rivers, shining jewels of the land.

Her words heard only by the whispering reed beds,

Her gentle songs echoing only for the new-born mists,

Her bright steps reflected solely in its shining waters.

Long upon those life-giving waters did she linger,

Who soon, the gods decreed, would see myriad gifts spring forth,

The cornucopia by which the path of that world was truly set.

- Translation of fragmentary excerpt from ‘Tyche’

By Eremion of Odontes.

~ Juni – Crossing the River ~

Sat under guard on the boat, as it pulled out of Udrasa, Juni found herself wondering whether or not it was too late to kick Lin Ling overboard and see if she floated or sank – or bounced. Next to her, Chunhua had an expression of flat neutrality that spoke volumes as well. Lin Ling, for her part, kneeling between four guards who all had their spears pressed against her neck while the masked, female Ur’Vash, called Quazam, who was now seated on a throne at the back of the boat, conferred quietly with the ‘Chief’ of Udrasa.

The Ur’Inan were slumped, dejected and under guard at the front of the boat. The guards standing around them just looked bored but she could feel the ‘intent’ radiating off the Ur’Inan – it varied from dismissal to derision, but it was clear that they didn’t think much of their captors.

“Is this what you hoped for, Azuum?” Naakai asked softly after a few minutes.

“Be quiet, savage, or we cut out your tongue,” one of the guards said blandly, placing the greenish-bronze blade of the spear against Naakai’s cheek.

“…”

“How amusing that would be,” the scrawny, tattooed Ur’Vash female giggled. “Can you be a speaker if you can’t speak?”

Naakai glanced at her, then back at Azuum, but said nothing further.

The guard holding the spear smirked for a moment, clearly amused at what he saw as Naakai’s capitulation, but didn’t withdraw the blade.

They remained in stifled silence, suffocated by circumstances and the humid night air as the boat slowly departed away from the lights of Udrasa, travelling down the channel in the marshes, illuminated by lanterns on stone block pillars, she noted, towards the river. All that was audible, beyond the chirp of bugs, was the lapping of the water against the sides of the large craft and the *clop* *clop* of the oars as they entered and exited the water.

Other craft on the channel gave them a wide berth or exited it entirely as they passed. The fishermen and others on them bowing down, faces pressed to the floors of their vessels until they had passed well out of sight, as far as she could see.

What surprised her, though, was that beyond being unable to move, her cultivation was not really restrained in any way.

-Probably it’s a trap, she concluded after a while, considering their options. They don’t need to restrain us like that, but if we do try something they will just oppress us directly.

Looking at the guards and how she could feel no qi at all from them, just a faint pressure, she could only conclude that all of them were at least Immortals, 6th Advancement as Ling had said the Ur’Vash called it. At best guess, Kozrak, covered in eye tattoos – the Chieftain, or Master, or whatever they called him – was an Ancient Immortal. That likely meant the masked, female Ur’Vash was even stronger, given how she had been addressed.

-Great, just great…

She focused on ‘Bright Heart Shifting Steps’ for a moment, seeing what it might gain her, then froze as she found Quazam staring at her directly. The Ur’Vash’s eyes were like two unsettling back holes in her golden mask as they seemed to try to peer through her for a long moment. In a disturbing way she was suddenly put in mind of the ‘Darkness Below’… until she realised that it was not her imagination. There was a horrible kinship there, somehow. Something in Quazam had been touched by that darkness, just as they had in their long trek through those silent, dead halls filled only with ancient horror and lost memories.

-She also travelled into the depths… or is it something more?

“You disrespect the Great Mother!”

The snarled utterance beside her was the only warning she got before a hand grasped her by the back of the head, fingers tangling up her hair. Unable to move, she felt her bones creak as her body was forcibly re-arranged by the guard and the deck rose up to meet her with enough force to make her grunt.

‘Devoted, Path, Lotus, Body, Bestowal’

“How interesting…”

Even as her mantra rang in her mind, the cool voice of Quazam sounded right above her.

“Great Mother,” the guards saluted, banging their spears on the deck.

A smaller hand pulled her back up until she was again looking at Quazam, now standing right before her.

“Words of the Heart,” Quazam sounded almost amused. “Devoted, Path… Rebirth? Form… no… Body… and Gift… or something like it.”

“…”

She stared dully at the other woman as she mostly grasped what her mantra was just by looking at her.

“All of them have such a thing… how interesting…” Quazam’s eyes seemed to bore into her, as if searching for something more.

-The talisman?

“And you are touched by Good Fortune… much more strongly than the others were.”

“Speak.”

The command was imperious, absolute, satin chains that sank into her body, detectable only by the absence they left.

-Laws…

“Yes… I have what you call… laws…” Quazam murmured, her face still hidden behind the golden mask. “Speak.”

The words commanded again, hunting for the source of her strength she was certain. What was most disturbing was how her Mantra just seemed to spin bizarrely, unable to interface with her body fully.

“Is this the first time you have experienced such a thing? Did your forebears tell you that those words cannot be taken?” Quazam said, amusement ringing in her voice now.

“It is true I suppose, from a certain point of view, but those who made that promise are long gone. The words remain, but your flesh is weak, human child.”

“…”

“Speak.”

Again she resisted the echoing command that came through the other’s eyes.

“Her will is certainly stronger than those others,” the scrawny, female Ur’Vash giggled.

“She is certainly an interesting little child,” Quazam agreed. “You are surprised? Your disguise is good; ignorance is an exceptional shield before those here.”

“H…human?” Azuum, who was bowing nearby, stammered.

“Yes,” Quazam didn’t look at him, or the others, just held her eyes. “This is what the Tyrant’s progeny look like. This is the face of those who ruined your people, our peoples… all peoples.”

That last utterance was so soft it nearly merged with the wind, but the sinister undertones in it made her heart shake. For a brief moment she saw, reflected in Quazam’s eyes, such a pure malevolence that she would not have credited it as possible.

“This is the image after which we were wrought…”

All around, Azuum and the others who were bowed to the floor were shaking in terror.

“Look.”

The command made all of them raise their heads to stare at her and Chunhua.

“This is the ‘Human’.”

Quazam’s tone was almost mocking now, but in the eyes of all those present she could see the fear, the anger and the revulsion. Worse, she could feel it, strangely, within that link. It pushed against her, tried to worm into her, warp her in ways that even her mantra could not really affect, it seemed.

“…”

The others, even the other Ur’Inan, looked a bit shocked… well, more shocked than they had been – the revulsion was less, but the fear was still there and a tiny bit of hate. It made her sigh in her heart, even though she understood after a fashion what was happening.

“You wonder how…” Quazam mused, still staring at her, cupping her chin with one hand. “They are ignorant; they do not know a world with your kind. You are just a tale, a dark nightmare for their fables and myths, but I remember – I am Quazam.”

That last utterance, caught by the lingering auspice of ‘Bright Heart Shifting Steps’, struck her as slightly odd, although she could not really place how… or why.

With it, all the guards saluted again, as if it was trained into them to respond to her name?

“Great Mother to the Masters…”

“Great Mother to the Masters…”

“Great Mother to the Masters…”

The echoes of their salute followed after Quazam’s words in a way that made her skin clammy in the night air.

“Oh well… all will be as it should, soon enough…” Quazam’s words hung in the air like discordant ethereal chimes, for she was already back and seated on her throne, staring at the darkness of the river and the swamplands as if she had never so much as moved.

The boat travelled on through the humid darkness with only the rhythmic *clop* of the oars in the water, the hiss of wind in the reeds and the sounds of the swamp to keep them company. The silence now was thoroughly eerie, to the point of being as oppressive as the clammy humidity. Azuum and the others who had been forced to come along just stared at them as if they were vipers, while the other Ur’Inan simply stared at the deck, sullen or in shock; it was hard to tell which.

Eventually, after some unknown period of time, the distant lights they had been travelling towards drifted out of the darkness and she found them passing into a sort of sheltered lagoon encircled with towers lit by blazing bonfires. Guards stood around, peering alertly into the darkness while others loaded goods onto smaller but similarly designed reed boats. As they pulled up to the dock she even saw what had to be a few smaller fishing vessels, clustered around several much less grand docks at one side of the lagoon where a small, heavily fortified settlement was present.

“Take them off. We will wait here until the sun rises thoroughly,” the scrawny Ur’Vash woman snapped.

“What of them?” one of the guards asked, pointing to Azuum and the others.

“…”

Kozrak looked pensive for a moment then just waved a hand. The guards saluted and then forced all the Ur’Inan up at weapon point, escorting them off onto the dock. Azuum and the others followed afterwards, not escorted quite as forcefully, but it was clear to her there was little ‘respect’ there.

At that point, Quazam also departed. As soon as she left the boat, everyone else within eyeshot dropped to their knees in silence, almost grinding their faces in the dirt and holding their hands above their heads in supplication.

“We Bow for the Master,” echoed as Kozrak and the tattooed, female Ur’Vash followed after.

Lin Ling came next, still restrained by the four spears, then the two of them, also escorted at spear point. They were met at the end of the dock by a sweating, paunchy Ur’Vash dressed in white linen robes and wearing a bronze mask who bowed deeply.

“Greetings to the Great Mother of the Masters…”

“Greetings to Master Ashaal…”

“Greetings to Master Kozrak…”

Each salute was punctuated by a deep bow.

“It is our honour to receive you,” the official in charge of the outpost declared.

With a wave of his hand, three figures were dragged forward – Ur’Vash who looked like they had been badly beaten. As she watched, unable to do anything, they were forced down before the two Masters.

Ashaal chuckled, looking them over. “What did they do?”

“They are of this Golden Flowers Tribe.”

“…”

“Captured by my sons. Rebellion against the Masters is forbidden,” the official murmured with a bow.

Ashaal laughed, her voice echoing disturbingly as she walked over to the three shivering prisoners.

“You hear that? What do you say for yourselves?”

“We… are not Grass Stalkers,” the leader rasped. “We do not bow to you, crazy mage.”

“Well said, well said!” Ashaal cackled. “And yet you bow…”

The others all around laughed at the three kneeling prisoners as Ashaal just continued to laugh.

“They say they do not bow to ‘crazy mages’, but they still bow… do their words mean nothing?”

“They are craven, rebellious. Who can say what they believe now?” the official replied smoothly.

“Well said, well said…” Ashaal giggled. “What is the penalty for speaking false words to the Masters?”

“Death…” one of those beside the official murmured.

She could only stare, dully, as Ashaal reached down and grasped the unfortunate prisoner by the neck, hauling them up to her eye level. However, the expected murder did not come; instead, Ashaal just giggled and patted the stunned prisoner on the face and turned away.

“These three are not enough,” she said to the official. “We will need to go all the way across. Give me nine more and see to it that they are suitable before we depart.”

“…”

“As Master Ashaal commands,” the official bowed deeply before turning to his adjuncts. “Deal with these others.”

Still restrained, she watched as Quazam, Ashaal and Kozrak departed, escorted by the still bowing and scraping official.

“We are also…” one of those with Azuum spoke up only to find a spear pointed in his face.

“Silence. Know your place and be respectful in the presence of the Masters.”

“…”

-Yep, they are just as screwed as we are, she sneered in her heart.

“Take them to the compound and hold them until it is clear what the Masters want with them all,” the adjunct official snapped curtly before turning and departing with several of the guards, clearly disinterested in seeing it through in person.

They were led, again at spear point, through a large archway, across a courtyard and then into a much smaller courtyard filled with cells… and…

“Well that’s charming,” Chunhua signed unobtrusively as they stared up at the four bodies that were hanging by their necks at the far end of the courtyard.

“And they seemed so hospitable before,” she added with as much of a sarcastic bent on her subtle gesture as possible.

Looking around, she saw Lin Ling was still under guard by four of the guards from the boat. A total of ten of them had followed the outpost guards, taking up positions at the gate and around the courtyard without any real engagement with the existing guards.

They stood there in the torch-lit darkness for almost an hour she guessed, under the rather bored gaze of the guards. Speaking was forbidden – in fact, making so much as a sound or a movement turned out to be forbidden. Any breach of those unspoken rules, as happened eventually when one of the Ur’Inan collapsed, was met with brutality.

It was only the presence of the guards from the boat, she suspected, that stopped them beating the unfortunate hunter, who was one of those injured by the serpent attack, to death. Even so, they still beat them for a full five minutes with spear butts, spitting on them and speaking insults in a tongue she guessed had to be another Ur’Vash dialect.

Finally, the adjunct returned, nine naked Ur’Vash men and women in tow, who were then stood with the other three prisoners. He then walked around the prisoners, staring at them pensively before finally arriving at the two of them.

“So you are the ‘Human Devils’,” he sneered, staring at her and Chunhua a trifle dubiously.

She said nothing, nor did Chunhua—

“Speak when you are spoken to… acknowledge your devilry!” the adjunct hissed, grasping her around the neck.

“Enough,” the guard standing near them grunted.

“Apologies… apologies…” the adjunct stepped back, bowing slightly to the boat guard. “I merely wished to see them acknowledge their crime…”

“Your desire to please the Masters is commendable, but do not overstep. You will not get a second warning,” the other guard added.

“Many apologies, many apologies,” the adjunct nodded again and back off, to sit on a chair that had been prepared at the side of the courtyard.

At this point, she noted that Azuum and the others who had come with him, such as Uaazar, were being escorted to a door at the side of the courtyard.

Left with little else to do, beyond obsess about their current circumstances, Juni again found herself directing her focus inwards. She was sure she was getting close to the point of her qi in her dantian coalescing again as well – the idea of that happening in these circumstances was deeply unappealing, for all sorts of reasons, not least the unwanted attention it might draw. Using qi externally was out of the question and her mantra was still affected by whatever Quazam had done… but she was able to keep applying her divination arts to help adjust her qi cycle and keep it in check.

Each adjustment to the way qi flowed through her meridians increased the efficacy of the cycles thereafter, but it also meant that each cycle required more qi, thus delaying the point where her core would reform again. It was not a long term solution, but it was the best one she had.

More curiously though, she noted that the mere act of having her divination art active as it was, was also contributing to her cultivation in some other slight and mostly unquantifiable way. She didn’t dare look at the talisman, in case anyone watching had the means to find it – Quazam had not, she was sure, but whether that was because it was well hidden or she had just not cared to was unclear.

It was something she had noted before, when trying to work out why the aspects of divination and the auguries that were coming from ‘Bright Heart Shifting Steps’ were so noncommittal. Even now, anything regarding their future prospects was just vague, ill-defined and without any semblance of coherent structure. Reasonably, in their current circumstances, she would have expected there to be all kinds of rather unfortunate inductions, but against all the odds she just got vague, if admittedly inauspicious sensations.

Even returning to ‘Heart Shifting Steps’ got her nothing that was more than ‘this situation is kinda bad’, and that in and of itself she did not need a fancy divination art to determine. The longer it continued, the less inclined she was to believe it was just Lin Ling’s lack of control over her principle as well. In the short term that seemed like a reasonable hypothesis, but in the current circumstances that seemed rather unlikely.

She was still pondering that when the darkness started to fade, revealing swirling, dense mists in the pre-dawn light. With that first lightening of the darkness a distant bell sounded – strange, muffled and a bit discordant.

“ALL PRAISE TO THE GREAT MOTHER OF THE MASTERS!” the guards’ words echoed as they all bowed down.

“PRAISE TO THE MASTERS, SHIELD OF UDRASA!”

“PRAISE TO THE MASTERS. THEY ARE OUR SALVATION!”

“PRAISE TO UDRASA, PROSPERITY OF VASH!”

Their words seemed strange to her, especially that last line, but she didn’t have time to ponder it, because the Adjunct had rounded on the prisoners, his face turning slightly mottled with rage.

“You will bow down!” the force of principle washed over them, grasping her body and pushing her to the ground as if she was a puppet.

The bell rang again and all the guards repeated their salute.

“…”

This time, the prisoners also bowed deeply and repeated the same words. She resisted, feeling the wrongness in the words much more keenly now.

“You will say the words…” the strength of command intensified and some of the Ur’Inan also mumbled them.

Beside her, Chunhua was pale and shaking as she also fought against it.

“You. Will. Show. Respect. To. The. Great. Mother.”

The adjunct’s command seemed to resonate with the bell as it chimed a third time. This time, only the three of them, Nakaai and Lashaan she thought did not mumble the words – and Naakos, who was still unconscious where he had been dropped.

The adjunct stalked over to her as the guards hauled them up.

“You are lucky you are not my prisoner,” the adjunct sneered. “This disrespect deserves ten thousand deaths each more miserable than the last. Truly you are a human devil, who has no respect for those who protect and provide.”

“…”

“I see only one lot of devils here,” Chunhua managed to rasp, “and it is not us.”

“Hahaaha…” the Adjunct laughed, as if this was a terrible joke. His hand stopped right before Chunhua’s face however, disturbing only her hair.

He trembled slightly, then just tore off her gown, leaving it in tatters and Chunhua blank-faced. “Monkeys do not deserve clothes. This is fitting,” he sneered, before turning to her and repeating the same action.

-If I can manage it, you, your nine generations and your nameless accursed cow are dead, she swore in her heart.

“You have good eyes, devil girl,” the adjunct hissed, his face mere centimetres from hers suddenly. “If you were my prisoner I would pluck them out, one at a time, and make you watch as I ate them.”

“If you were my prisoner,” she rasped back. “I would burn you in sin fire and see your nine generations die to myriad misfortunes each—”

“Enough,” the guard from the boat cut in and her voice vanished, robbed as an invisible hand closed around her throat.

“Do not overstep,” the other guard said blandly to the Adjunct. “It is your honour to watch over these ones. They are important to the Great Mother. Did she tell you to harm them?”

“My Honour, My Honour,” the adjunct bowed deeply, backing off, “I was merely concerned for their disrespect to the Great Mother, Mother of the Masters. May she rule Udrasa for all time.”

“May she rule for all time,” the other guards echoed.

“Good, you understand clearly,” the guard sounded amused, she fancied. “However…”

The bell rang again, much more sonorously this time, cutting off his words. All the local guards turned to the doorway and bowed, the adjunct included. A moment later the official swept into the courtyard and surveyed everything, noted the nine additional prisoners and nodded perfunctorily.

“They are to be taken to the vessel,” a woman, dressed in a diaphanous robe and a lot of red and gold body paint in the shape of eyes, said blandly.

“It seems your luck is good…” the guard deadpanned to the sweating adjunct, sweeping his spear around to make her move towards the gate they had come through.

“…”

They walked out in silence, Lin Ling going first, then them, then the prisoners and the other Ur’Inan. Azuum and his group came last still looking unsettled. The boat and the dock was as they had left it. What stood out in the pre-dawn half-light though, was that the mists outside did not intrude beyond the walls or the still burning bonfires.

-Is there something special about them?

She tried using ‘Bright Heart Shifting Steps’ unobtrusively, then stopped as she saw the guard besides her looking at her pensively.

-How by the myriad hells do they know? she cursed in her heart.

They were led down the dock, onto the vessel and made to sit where they had before in near total silence. It was still quite some time before Ashaal and Kozrak appeared, escorting Quazam, who still lounging on her palanquin throne.

Almost as soon as they appeared through the gate, everyone bowed deeply, whether willingly or not, until Quazam was on the boat and it had actually cast off. Only then were they allowed to raise their heads as the boat moved on out of the swamp-bound fort and back towards the river.

If she had thought the swamp at night was unsettling, the swamp in the dawn mists was somehow even more so. Visibility was dimmed to the point where she could barely see beyond the edge of the boat itself. The mists themselves were dense with qi, although not any kind of qi she could easily discern. She tried to look at it with ‘Bright Lotus Eyes’, but found the art to be no more or less effective than just looking normally, which was utterly bizarre.

Soon she became aware that sound was also behaving strangely. The wind still whispered in the reeds, but it had a strange, discordant edge to it that had certainly not been there in the night. The sound of the oars in the water was also bizarrely discordant, as if nature was somehow offended by the act of the water surface being disturbed.

As they rowed on, she also noted that even Ashaal and Kozrak looked uneasy now. The guards were also shifting, looking this way and that.

“It is time for the first one,” Ashaal said suddenly.

“So soon?” Kozrak frowned.

“Is it related to what occurred to the north?” Ashaal muttered, seeming to ignore him.

She was wondering what Ashaal meant, when one of the nine new prisoners was dragged forward, resisting strenuously now.

“It is your honour to serve,” Kozrak sighed, seeming oddly resigned.

Two guards hauled up a small raft-like boat from the front and the prisoner, still sobbing, was bound to it by ropes, presumably so they could not throw themselves out into the river.

“You will row forward, ahead of the boat,” Ashaal commanded flatly.

“I…will… row… forward… ahead… of… the… boat…” the prisoner gasped, repeating the command back.

Once that was done, the craft was put over the side with a dull splash.

“Row… It is your honour,” Ashaal chuckled, leaning over the side. “Honour to the Great Mother, Mother of the Masters.”

“Honour to the Great Mother, Mother of the Masters.”

Again, everyone, even Kozrak, echoed that refrain and again she felt her skin grow clammy to hear it.

They sat there in silence, listening to the echoes of the oars for a few moments until the rope that had been bound to the ship snapped taut. Much more quietly, the ship’s own oars started to dip into the water again.

This state of affairs continued for almost twenty minutes until they reached the open river, whereupon the boat was called back and hauled up, its occupant wet and shivering with fear.

“You have survived,” Kozrak pronounced as the prisoner was unbound again. “Your crimes are pardoned. Show your gratitude to the Great Mother.”

“By the Great Mother’s Mercy I live,” the prisoner sobbed, barely able to prostrate himself.

“Honour to the Great Mother, Mother of the Masters.”

“…”

Again the salutation was murmured by everyone and the boat picked up pace. Around them, the mists receded somewhat, allowing her to get her first proper glimpse of the river, dark in the pre-dawn light. Above them, the sky was sort of white-purple, the first rays of sun glimmering strangely across the tops of swirling mist banks.

The river itself was mostly millpond smooth, the surface only broken by the occasional swirl of a current or a rising fish as they made their way across it. With the mists and the blurred reed banks it was impossible for her to get any real grasp of how fast the current might be, but their progress was not that fast, she came to realise as they angled slightly upstream.

After a few minutes though, Ashaal narrowed her eyes and waved to the guards, who stepped forward to take up stations to protect them and Quazam. A moment later a billowing bank of fog drenched the boat. From where, she never saw.

The world became silent and white. Even the sound of oars in the water vanished as those on the boat looked around, barely visible shades against the white. The mist itself was unsettlingly cold as well, almost yin in its strength if she was any guess, but yet again without any clear vestige of ‘qi’ in to explain why it was interfering with anything.

-Does that mean this is a phenomenon entirely caused by the strength of laws? she guessed, trying not to feel more panicked by that errant thought than the rest of her presence circumstances.

She was just beginning to wonder if frost would form on the deck when the fog flowed away as rapidly as it had arrived – or perhaps they flowed away from it.

The sighs of relief from those on the boat were almost palpable and as the oars suddenly hit the water again, she realised why the world had seemed too silent. It wasn’t simply that the fog had drowned out noise; they had actually stopped rowing the boat while in the fog bank, and instead let it drift with the current.

“…”

That process, unnerving as it was, repeated twice more before they crossed the bulk of the river and re-entered the reed beds. Neither time did anything untoward happen that she could see, or even detect, but both times most of the other occupants of the boat, except for Quazam, shivered and looked relieved when the fog passed. Soon, another prisoner was sent out on the boat, although they too returned unharmed, which seemed to unnerve everyone, not least the prisoners, who returned shaking and sobbing, somehow in worse state than they had been when they left.

They did not have the manner of people pardoned of whatever crime they had done to warrant this experience – assuming they had actually committed any crime. Given the way Udrasa seemed to be ruled it would not have surprised her to learn that they had not.

As she was considering that, the fog swirled, briefly obscuring everything again, and she suddenly found that she was no longer restrained to quite the same degree she had been before. It took all her self-control not to move, giving that away, but in the same instant she was beset by the strange urge that ‘this was an opportunity’.

-I can escape… use my divination arts to help the others…

Narrowing her eyes, she stared at the errant thought, because it was an errant thought – she had enough experience with them now to know that, and pondered where it had come from. Her mantra was still spinning, unable to touch the rest of her body, as if it were cycling within a ghost version of her not quite in the world.

-That is probably why, she thought with a grimace. Since the ruin… since my Mantra Seed formed, I haven’t had those kind of derivative thoughts… but this one…

-It is an opportunity, she thought grimly, staring at the deck.

“…”

The urge was overwhelming, but she didn’t move, instead thinking through what she would do.

She would dash for the side…

Make her way over it… dragging Teng Chunhua with her…

The fog lifted, and her unwillingness to act was thoroughly vindicated. They would have landed in open water, easily visible to everyone on the boat, and the mists had dissipated at a moment when she would still have been in the air in all likelihood.

“…”

“Why has this accursed fog not lifted?” Kozrak grumbled, looking out at the reed beds as the swirling vapours rolled onwards. “It is well past dawn… It is usually only for an hour either side…”

“Again, none have been taken, Honour to the Great Mother,” Azuum ventured, bowing deeply.

The other Ur’Inan from Udrasa all nodded and bowed deeply as well, echoing Azuum’s statement.

Kozrak shot them an amused look and just shook his head as if their words meant nothing. In the grand scheme of things she was pretty sure they did mean very little, but it was little comfort at this point when she had no clue how they were going to extricate themselves from this mess, especially if she was going to start getting weird moments like that.

“Hah…” Ashaal just sneered and turned back to stare at the reed beds flowing slowly by on the left-hand side.

Every time the fog came thereafter, she found her restraints weakening to various degrees. Each time she was sure she could have grabbed Chunhua and made an escape, but again, every time she gamed it out in her head, refusing the opportunity, except in her imagination she saw only disaster. It was unnerving, because she was certain now that someone, either Quazam or maybe Ashaal, was somehow messing with her in some way. It made her realise how much she had come to rely on her mantra, even though it was not inherited, and also trusted perhaps too much in some of the security it appeared to give.

-In the end, I am not even at Golden Core… Most of those here are Immortal…

-I am the weakest person here by a long shot… and yet I am entertaining ideas that I might be the one who runs and saved everyone?

-How ludicrous is…

“…”

She stared at her inner thoughts for a second time, sweating, because that was also an errant thought. It was an entirely different tack, but the end goal was the same – flee.

Suppressing the urge to throw herself over the side, which was briefly overwhelming, she exhaled softly, finding her skin had turned clammy again. After that, all she did was sit there, immobile, focusing on observing the minutiae of her cultivation, counting down the cycles – over 14,000 now – since her last Core Formation cycle and trying to distract herself from any and all such distractions.

How long she sat like that, she couldn’t say, but it was only when they were passing between two tall watchtowers into another ‘safe’ harbour that she allowed herself to step outside that shell she had constructed… and found Quazam standing over her. Everyone else…

She flinched and found that Quazam was still seated where she had been.

-A hallucination?

-Coward… the errant voices sneered.

-You’re afraid…

-Dare not step forward?

-More afraid for yourself than your friends…

She shivered, glad she had not really scrambled back, and forced the voices back into one bundle of worries.

The harbour they were in was part of an island amid the riverlands – whether it was a natural or artificial island, it was hard to say, but over the years it had become an island made out of buildings as far as she could see. Towers stood around its perimeter, ropes running between them festooned with ragged, faded yellow banners bearing strange sigils and the symbol of the town. She wondered at their purpose until she saw the nets also slung between the towers and then the occasional bird stuck in them.

The town itself was maybe the size of Golden Grass village, but it was divided into two halves. On the left was an actual town, comprised of a dozen streets or thereabouts, with cramped buildings and many small boats clustered about its wharves. On the right was a sprawling complex of walls, towers and several, much grander buildings made of stone rather than mud brick. Here, again, tattered flags festooned towers and guards patrolled the walls.

From that right-hand side, a procession of maybe fifty Ur’Vash were already arriving on the dock to greet them. There were several empty palanquins and female Ur’Vash dancing to the beat of barely audible drums.

Once they docked, their experience was much as before. Quazam, Ashaal and Kozrak departed on the palanquins, though this time Azuum and the others went with them. They were all escorted to a courtyard by the local guards and some of those from the boat and made to stand still in the middle. The only exception was again Lin Ling, who was held at spear blade’s reach, separate from them.

They stayed like that for the whole day as the sun rose and the mist resolutely refused to recede. The sense of being unnaturally prompted to escape departed with the others, all but confirming that someone had either been testing her or toying with her. However, in its place the sense of unease over the ambivalence of the divination outcomes she kept receiving continued to rise.

Any and all speech was forbidden, and the slightest movement was met with vicious beatings as she again got to observe when two of the Ur’Inan and one of the prisoners collapsed at various points. As a result, she had no means to inquire of Chunhua if she had also experienced the same weird testing or tempting.

When evening came, an official arrived, looked over them and pointed to several of the Ur’Inan womenfolk, including Lashaan and Eruna, marshalling them to one side. He then cast his eye over her and Chunhua pensively and pointed to them as well.

The two guards that came with him walked over, only to be stopped by those from the boat.

“Only her,” the guard pointed at her.

“The Master wishes to see both…” the official, who was a tall, sallow-faced Ur’Vash with nearly yellow-brown skin, stated.

“…”

Still seeing that the guards were reticent, the official pulled out a talisman of some kind and held it up. One of the guards considered it and nodded, seeming resigned.

“They are to be unharmed.”

“Of course,” the official bowed.

“All of them are to be unharmed… They are Quazam’s,” the other guard stressed.

“As you command, so I shall relay,” the official bowed deeply.

The five of them were escorted through several corridors and guarded doors and into another courtyard which was much less spartan, and made to stand in silence beside a fountain until a buxom Ur’Vash woman wearing a gossamer robe and covered in red and gold tattoos arrived to stare at them pensively.

“The Master wishes for dancers. They will do, if we cover their faces,” the female said after a long moment of consideration.

“The guards stated that they are to be untouched,” the official said after a moment’s further pause.

“Hah… well, Kozrak will be in attendance. If there is an objection, he will surely say so,” the female shrugged.

“There is also the possibility these two cannot dance…” the official pointed out. “It would be easier to just get some suitable ones from the town.”

“Perhaps, but the Master not only has Quazam here but also Young Warleader Zashal,” the woman grumbled as if this was not necessarily a helpful thing.

“You, human girl? Can you dance?” the command sank into her, into them both because she saw Chunhua trembling as well.

“No…” she spat out. “I am not someone who learned to dance.”

“With your looks? I am surprised,” the woman sighed. “Well, it is easy enough, all you have to do is shake your attributes and hide your face.”

“…”

She scowled, or tried to, but found that she was unable to move again.

“Yep, I am definitely going to see to it that there is a lot of payback dealt out for this,” she scowled, and then gawped as she realised she had been forced to say that out loud.

The woman stared at her and then laughed as if this was the funniest thing she had ever heard.

“Oh… dear child… you think you will get payback?” Suddenly she was standing in front of her, her smile infused with some strange, unsettling intent. “You think we are weak? Like those savages? We saw the ones of your kind who came past; they fled from us rather than attack. Nobody is coming for you, although it is a pity Quazam got her old claws in you first.”

Unable to say anything, she was made to smile.

“See? You are weak, a girl without even a heart core and you want to resist me? Let alone anyone else here?” the woman laughed, patting her cheek gently.

“…”

“Listen to me,” the Ur’Vash smiled gently. “You will wear what you are told, dance how you are told. Your kind are no longer the masters of this place. We are.”

The words hung in the air like chimes, enchanting, trying to arouse desire and worse in her, although she managed to resist it.

“Huh… words of the heart…” the woman frowned. “So that is why Quazam wants you… how novel.”

-This Quazam wants me because of my Mantra?

“Both of you, in fact… How precious, how precious!” the woman laughed, turning away and clapping her hands.

“Dress them up and paint them, then send them through.”

All she could do was stand there, immobile with Chunhua, Lashaan, Eruuna and the other young woman whose name she thought was Saarua, as the servants painted various symbols onto them. Having traipsed through the darkness for so long and had so many tribulations up to this point, she found, rather to her inner annoyance, that her nudity was very low down the list of things here that bothered her.

The same couldn’t be said for Chunhua, she was pretty sure. While the other woman’s face was a neutral mask still, based on her reaction to the thin garments in Udrasa, she was no doubt seething in side. In fact, Chunhua’s involvement in this whole sorry mess was probably her chief regret at this point, she realised. Even ahead of not just walking away that next morning and going on their way across the plains on their own rather than get entangled with the Ur’Inan.

Once that was done, they were escorted through and given a few oddments of gold jewellery to wear on their arms, legs and neck.

“Bah… we are missing some,” one servant scowled, poking through the various bits of jewellery.

“Well, go get some. It is not like they can run off anyway,” the other woman replied, scowling at the five of them as if this was their problem.

Both muttered for a moment in the other tongue then departed to search for whatever it was.

“What do we do now?” Saruuna asked, sounding as afraid as she felt.

“…”

Lashaan stared at the wall and then shook her head.

“We can only plan for the worst.”

“The worst?” she echoed, having a pretty clear idea in her head what that might be.

Lashaan nodded, adjusting one of the bracelets. “You think these barbarians are good?”

“You think we are blind?” Chunhua muttered, echoing her own sentiments.

“When we were captured, this was only going to end one way. The Naa’Eru Inan have ended. This is the crime of Azuum and Uaazar, one they will be judged for,” Lashaan sighed and shook her head, then glanced at the door before going over to window and dropping two matching bracelets down behind the plants outside. “We do not have long.”

“…”

She watched as Lashaan bit the tip of her tongue and then puffed her cheeks for a moment before carefully spitting a mouthful of blood into the palm of her hand.

“You were able to draw very creditable tribal tattoos, fooled me, so this should not be hard,” Lashaan added. “Draw this symbol here…”

As she observed, Lashaan drew a symbol in her own blood on her forehead that somehow changed itself to be ‘Sar’. She then traced lines down across her cheeks, down her neck and drew a triangle between her breasts. From each corner she traced out a line around her breasts that then re-joined the lines that ran from the lowest point to a second symbol on her stomach that re-arranged itself to read dancer. Finally, she drew a circle around that and linked the whole thing back up.

It struck her, watching, that the route somewhat traced the lines of the body’s principle meridian network and core organs in the torso and head.

“Draw that with your own blood, quickly now,” Lashaan urged them both.

She noted Eruuna was already doing so.

“What does this do?” she asked as she started to repeat the motions, just expelling blood from her fingers to do it.

“If they rape you, this will curse anyone who does so for nine generations. Their children will kill their fathers, their mothers will die in childbirth, their blood will die out and anyone who is bound to them by oath will be ruined by one misfortune a year until they die. This is the Dancer of the Desert’s Vengeance, for those who corrupt her chosen gifts.”

“Uhh…” Chunhua’s mouth opened and shut a few times.

“Ummm really?” she asked blankly.

“Absolutely,” Lashaan nodded. “It is rarely used, for it is indiscriminate, but in the current circumstances I doubt you care much? I certainly do not.”

“No… not especially,” she shook her head, quashing the queasy feeling in her stomach. “Although… how long does it last?”

“In this form it is not permanent, but it will last long enough,” Eruuna muttered.

“Can others dispel it?” Chunhua asked.

“Hah…” Lashaan smirked. “There are three great achievements of antiquity, of which the oldest tales speak: the ‘Words of the Heart’, the ‘Eye of the Mind’ and the ‘Blessing of the Blood’. This is related to the latter. When it is done, we will speak the words and it will be complete.”

Nodding, she finished up drawing the last bit, wondering what Lashaan meant by ‘complete’ it… and also about the other two. One was certainly the ‘Mantra’… but did that make the other one the ‘Symbol’ or something like it?

Taking her hand, Lashaan checked Chunhua and then also Saruuna, satisfying herself that the strange pattern was complete.

“Repeat after me,” Lashaan said with a soft exhalation. “We will dance for you, we who are blessed, daughters pure in heart and body. We pledge ourselves to the Blood of Sar, the Blood of Gods, and ours was the choice willingly made. Let none take it from us.”

As they spoke, softly, she suddenly felt her qi shifting in accordance to the words and the cadence with which Lashaan spoke them. The design melted away into her skin and as she observed linked around various organs in her body in a way that really did mirror the meridian system before fading way.

Curiously, ‘Bright Heart Shifting Steps’ also shifted faintly, as if resonating with it, and for the second time in as many days she found another example of it quietly doing an inexplicable thing to her cultivation.

“How do you undo it?” Chunhua asked, staring at the vanished marks.

“Later,” Lashaan hissed abruptly.

“…”

A moment later the door opened and the two servants returned, holding another pot of red paint and two golden bracelets identical to the ones Lashaan had chucked out the window. They stood there in silence as one of them finished painting red onto Saruuna, then they were escorted through several more relatively opulent rooms full of drapes and various precious-looking items and out into a large open courtyard.

Both levels were thronged with elegantly dressed Ur’Vash. On the lower level, various servants danced or waited on groups clustered around tables, while on the upper level many leaned over, watching the scene below while others lounged in the shade, fanned or massaged by those waiting on them as they consumed food and drink.

Front and centre on that upper level she found Kozrak and Ashaal, both looking rather bored, seated next to a powerfully built Ur’Vash wearing a golden mask like that of Quazam, albeit of a man with a big beard. To his far side was another, younger-looking Ur’Vash with a lot of black and gold tattoos and a rather ferocious martial aura – the ‘Young War Chief’ she guessed.

“MASTER ASHAAL, MASTER KOZRAK, WARLEADER ZASHRAL! MASTER UICAR!” a voice boomed out from opposite them – originating from a flamboyantly robed Ur’Vash wearing what she was sure was proper silk. “MAY I PRESENT TO YOU, SAVAGES OF ALL FORMS, BEAUTIES FOR YOUR ENTERTAINMENT!”

The five of them were escorted out into the open area in the middle as those all around laughed and pointed or exclaimed. At that point she was fairly sure that whatever had been painted on them in red and gold was likely nothing complimentary to their status.

“So which are the humans?” Zashral chuckled, leaning forward on the edge of the balcony.

“The brown-haired one and the black-haired one,” Kozrak supplied.

“Really? They look little different, not as I expected,” Zashral laughed.

“They were able to pass for Ur’Inan, although the savage nomad’s eyes are not as our civilised people are… or so I have heard,” another Ur’Vash seated near Zashral remarked.

“Haha… very true, very true…” Zashral agreed. “I had hoped to see them dance, but this seems like a bit of a waste… Why do we not change the entertainment somewhat?”

“In what way…?” Kozrak asked, frowning.

“There are so many rumours, I wish to see for myself the prowess of the human devil. You have various strange beasts captured from the swamps, do you not, Master Uicar?”

“You want to see them fight?” Kozrak frowned. “The agreement was that they dance for our entertainment, not fight duels.”

“Relax, Kozrak,” Zashral laughed jovially. “How about this… a monster that will not be too threatening… a slime, perhaps?”

“…”

That got a lot of laughs from around the room.

“Do you not all wish to see the prowess of the human devils? To see what provoked Ajara to such a frenzy?” Zashral added. “I was sent here by our war chief to assess the threat. This way we can have both entertainment and knowledge.”

“Quazam must be asked…” Kozrak muttered, glancing at Ashaal.

The tattooed Ur’Vash woman sighed and stopped poking through the platter of meats beside her.

“Master Ashaal?” Zashral asked rather jovially, she thought.

“You are awfully good-humoured to be talking to me like that, boy,” Ashaal chuckled. “Does your Grass Star tribe only have stuffed sock puppets for mages?”

“…”

Zashral’s expression slipped for a moment but recovered.

“…”

“The Great Mother says they may fight,” Ashaal said after a moment. “But not monsters. Two chosen youths from your entourage, three from this town of the same realm. To first blood, and the winner may do to the loser as they like so long as death is not the outcome.”

Zashral looked pensive for a moment and nodded. “Ebuja, Akkar!”

The two youths stood forward from behind him.

“We have no third advancement children, so this will have to do. Both are barely 15 summers old, sent to prove their mettle by old Ankrad.”

“It is only the third brown-haired girl who is that weak,” Master Uicar mused, looking to a person on his right. “Find the most promising child under 12 and bring them here.”

“…”

She caught enough of that exchange to be unsure whether she should feel insulted or surprised.

“No need for weapons, I take it?” Zashral added.

“No weapons,” Ashaal grunted, “You already overstretch, boy. I hope you do not strain yourself.”

Opening her mouth, she realised she could move again and actually speak as well.

“Uh… okay,” she muttered.

“Seriously, if I die here I will haunt your nine generations,” Chunhua scowled.

“Sorry,” she grimaced, before turning to the other three Ur’Inan woman.

“Are… you really human?” Lashaan asked at last.

“…”

“It is a term of your land, not ours,” she shrugged.

“We have nothing to do with whatever ancient grudge the people of this place have,” Chunhua added.

“And yet, because of you we…”

“Do not be naive, Saruuna,” Eruuna sighed. “This is Azuum’s shit pile, and Uaazar’s. Will you behave like an Ur’Vash and blame others for our own tribe’s failings?”

“You…” she blinked, surprised.

“There are many Ur’Vash… There are many Ur’Inan… There are surely many Humans, if you are indeed they,” Eruuna said. “You have been honest and righteous with us… If we die here, or worse, it is fate, we return to the Mother of Dark Waters, but I will not blame you.”

“No…” Lashaan sneered. “I will speak Uaazar’s name, and Azuum’s, to the Dark Brother at the water’s edge, and give him my offering that I might wait there, until I see them again.”

“Hah…” Eruuna laughed, turning to the five youths who had come down and were now standing there watching them with some derision.

“I will go first,” one of the Ur’Vash youths chuckled, stepping forward and pointing at Chunhua. “You, human devil. I am Akkar, son of Akzul, Grandson of Warchief Akkazum. It is your honour to be conquered by me.”

~ Chunhua – Courtyard Banquet ~

“…”

Chunhua found herself staring at the Ur’Vash youth who was pointing at her and wondering what depths her anger at their current circumstances could actually sink to. She didn’t need a fancy divination art like Juni had to read the double meaning in those words, spoken as they had been in Easten.

Her mantra was not working right… the horrible woman, Quazam had tried to do something to it, she was sure… but it had only partly succeeded. That didn’t really matter though, because her plan for this didn’t really involve her mantra at all. The only unfortunate part was that she couldn’t get any benefits from feeding the seething wellspring of inner rage inside her to it.

“Well?” Akkar said with a smirk.

“Sorry, I no speak Lataan good,” she shot back, deciding to just be obnoxious. “You ask if conquer by me? Very strange boy.”

“…”

Akkar stared at her.

“We start now? Or I must wait for him to get strong?” she added to the gallery at large.

It was a terrible pun, given the words for ‘Strong, Ready and ‘Penis’ were quite similar in their local dialect. Nobody laughed, which she expected. The goal was just to annoy Akkar.

“You may begin,” Zashral said to Akkar, rather than her.

Akkar laughed and made to dodge backwards—

{Jade Blossom Palm}

The blow, infused with Parasol Qi, leapt through the distance, hitting his body even as he dodged and made to kick her leg. It was a mistake no cultivator would have made, but she had observed that proper qi arts were surprisingly rare among the Ur’Vash. Most of them seemed to be Martial Cultivators.

Akkar screamed, grasping his chest as the wound corroded his flesh visibly, the Parasol Qi she had released rampantly sinking into his body. The others stared at him dully, then at her, apparently not able to—

Something sent her sprawling back as a large Ur’Vash landed on the floor beside the stricken Akkar and pressed a palm to his chest then swore and withdrew it.

“What did you do?”

“Me attack, try not kill, not realise he weak,” she shrugged.

“…”

“Have I won?” she added, letting some of her inner nervousness creep out.

“You devil… witch…” the Ur’Vash scowled, until laughter cut through his anger as Ashaal landed beside Akkar.

Without any preamble, the Ashaal extended her hand and all the qi inside the Ur’Vash flowed out and formed a ball in the air which Ashaal then dispersed with a snap of her fingers.

“It seems the winner is the human girl,” Ashaal chuckled. “She can do what she wants with him. Wasn’t that what you said, ‘little’ Warleader?”

Zashral scowled and waved a hand. The Ur’Vash grabbed Akkar and retreated up to the balcony.

“Figures,” she complained to Juni in Imperial Common now.

“Well, what did you expect?” Juni said with an eye roll, swapping back to Easten. “This lot seem to be cut straight out of a familiar cloth.”

“This is Ur’Vash,” Lashaan spat, before adding in Easten. “Rules for—”

“DISRESPECTFUL!”

Zashral roared, sending all five of them staggering. She grunted as a decent portion of the qi in her body dispersed just from the impact of the intent. Sitting up, she wiped away blood from her nose and was amused to see that much less of her reserves had vanished than she thought.

-Score one for Lin Ling’s strange stealth art and that parasol tree talisman, I guess.

“I… don’t think it… needs to be… stated…” Juni grimaced, sitting up and wiping blood from her nose and mouth away.

“…”

“Get them,” Zashral scowled to the others below.

Ashaal, who had arrived back on the balcony, laughed rather mockingly and tossed a small red spirit fruit into the air, catching it in her teeth and crushing it.

Another youth arrived, returning the numbers to five, and charged straight for her, even as the other four all moved towards Juni, Lashaan and the others.

“Well, that went about as expected,” she remarked, taking a step—

The blow smashed into her, carrying with it a sense of inevitability and inability to dodge that was depressingly familiar. The youth stamped on her chest, pinning her down with a nasty grin.

“You cheat, we can on—”

Without even trying, she just vomited a mouthful of blood-infused parasol qi into the air. It didn’t touch him, because he had a principle and was able to move it away, but it permeated everywhere else, spreading rapidly and in a remarkably uncontrolled fashion for what it was.

“You cheat… we can only…”

The stamp actually collapsed her lungs – without her physical cultivation being at the stage it was at, and her vitality now tied to her Nascent Soul, she would have been in a great deal of trouble.

-Interesting…

He dragged her up and without any preamble punched a hand into her chest, leaving a bloody hole there before tossing her down like a rag on the ground.

“…”

The pain, without really possessing her mantra in working order, was really quite something; however, his action didn’t garner the result he expected. The wound was already healing over, courtesy of her vital qi and her Nascent Soul, but the ‘Heart’ he held in his hand had no sign of a ‘Core’ on it.

“…”

At that point, the whole courtyard twisted bizarrely before her eyes. The Ur’Vash caught nearby screamed miserably as all the qi in the area flowed inwards towards Juni at a rate that could only mean one thing…

-She’s not actually that…? she wondered for a horrified moment, concerned that Juni’s plan to get them out of this was to try to summon a tribulation.

That didn’t appear though, and instead everyone up above scrambled back as qi visibly distorted the air around them, continuing to flow inwards towards Juni. Two of the Ur’Vash made desperate attempts to attack her, but to no avail—

The Ur’Vash who had struck her extended a hand and grasped for Juni then grunted and recoiled as even his qi started to bleed away. That moment of surprise bought Juni all the time she needed, it seemed, because the humid air in the courtyard stagnated faintly—

Familiar with what had occurred when Lin Ling attempted her Core Formation, she braced; however, the expected shockwave was nowhere near as severe, merely making her qi distort a bit. In the aftermath, however, Juni’s whole body shimmered faintly with white fire, and thousands of tiny lotus blossoms swirled around her.

After a few moments, everything started to stabilize again and she chose that moment to grasp the leg of the Ur’Vash who had been sent to just mess things up and physically injected a pulse of pure parasol qi into his leg. Distracted, he screamed and staggered as his flesh started to knot and warp, dissolving under its devouring form as it wormed into his bones.

“Oh seriously?” Ashaal sighed and suddenly appeared beside both of them.

The screaming Ur’Vash again had all his qi absorbed by her and dispersed, making her wonder yet again what realm Ashaal actually was. She was pretty sure the Ur’Vash who had struck her wasn’t an Immortal, but he had still had a principle – so probably whatever their equivalent of Dao Seeking was.

“You…” the Ur’Vash snarled and struck at her, rather weakly, it had to be said.

This time, rather than use parasol qi, she decided to just kill him. The blow, carrying his intent, entered her body, even as Ashaal cursed and kicked him away.

-Too late, sorry. You die, she smirked as she pushed her mantra, which was still not really doing what it should, straight into the path of the subsuming intent.

In short, there had been a reason why Quazam had done what she did – you didn’t poke mantras directly. It was a little-known secret and the death of a surprising number of experts who had tried to pry them, from what her Grandfather had told her when it was passed to her. This was the ‘last resort’ – if you poked a mantra with the intention of subsuming or subverting it directly, it would rebound on you and instead subsume you.

This was the reason why it was impossible to rip them out of a person’s head directly, near as she could tell. It didn’t matter what realm you were, or what realm the person doing the attack was – if you violated that rule, the odds were you died… horribly.

The Ur’Vash thrashed twice and blood flowed out of his eyes as his qi thoroughly deviated, ripping his inner body apart under the rebound from trying to grasp the mantra.

“What…?”

Ashaal stared dully.

“Interesting, very interesting…”

She never even saw Quazam arrive. Nor, it seemed, did anyone else, based on the number of people who flinched at the appearance of the beautiful and very naked figure, clothed only in her golden mask.

“The words in the heart cannot be taken,” Quazam chuckled, glancing up at Zashral. “Dangerous if you are ignorant, or incautious…”

“Great Quazam…” Zashral frowned, standing now.

“These are mine. Are you trying to test me, boy?” Quazam asked blandly.

“Udrasa is part of…”

“Will you tell me what things are mine and what things are not?” Quazam repeated.

“You…” Zashral scowled.

“I am Quazam,” Quazam murmured.

“Honoured is Quazam, Great Mother to the Masters…”

Almost every Ur’Vash present bowed deeply, except for those in Zashral’s entourage, and those down in the middle of the courtyard.

“Now do you understand?”

“…”

Zashral’s expression was perplexed as he stared around at the bowing figures.

“Well… no matter. You are young… There is time yet to learn,” Quazam sighed, looking back at them.

“I am disappointed, Ashaal. I left one instruction…”

“I am sorry… mother,” Ashaal bowed deeply.

Quazam nodded, looking at the guests with amusement, and then reappeared on the balcony. Uicar stood immediately and offered her his seat. She ignored it and shook her head, instead coming to stand beside Zashral, running her hand across his chest and then pressing a finger to his lips.

“Dancing is fine. They may dance for your entertainment, but they are mine… Do not forget it, little boy. If you do, I will make you mine as well…”

“…”

“Do you want to become mine… boy?”

Zashral’s expression turned rigid.

“Am. I. Clear?” Quazam repeated.

Zashral didn’t nod, but, looking up, she could only assume that the terrifying Ur’Vash took his silence as acquiescence, for she vanished again, as abruptly as she had appeared.

“Well… you heard her,” Ashaal scowled, turning back to the five of them. “Dance… Entertain us… The night is young.”

“I think I would rather get beaten,” she spat.

“…”

“Let me put this another way,” Ashaal smirked. “If you two do not dance, we will take those three over there and allow them to entertain all those youths up there…”

“…”

“And you will watch,” Kozrak added with a scowl.

Involuntarily she found herself glancing sideways at Juni whose face was a…

It was an odd expression, she realised, because up to this point she had never seen Juni genuinely enraged. Now, though, the woman’s eyes were narrowed and her mouth twisted into a faint sneer.

“I only know one dance. I hope you like it,” Juni smirked, stepping forward.

She stared dully as the other woman flowed into one of the basic fan forms. Without actual fans it looked a bit odd, but most people did consider it a dance. It was taught to boys and girls because you had to do a ceremonial dance for your naming day.

-How stupid… she sighed, and slipped into the same rhythm, trying to ignore her current naked state, mirroring the moves.

-I should have thought of that myself, instead of being caught up in their pace and being so overwhelmed by how horrible this situation is… Neither of us are children.

“…”

“How is this a dance?” Zashral sneered after a few moments of watching them glide and swirl through it.

Others also seemed to agree, various onlookers laughing and sneering, not that it mattered really.

-That said… there is a problem. If they decide to grab Lashaan and the others and mistreat them, what can we actually do?

-What can we actually do? It would have been better to just keep fighting opponents…

Finishing up the full form took nearly ten minutes. At the start they just got derision and mockery; however, after a while those watching just got bored and went back to the feast and their own talking… or summoned dancing girls of their own.

“What do we do now?” she asked Juni. “There will come a point where they just decide we are taking the piss and then it’s all going to go down like monkeyshit as a first greetings gift.”

“Indeed,” Lashaan sighed. “You… should not have to do this.”

“And yet here we are,” Juni sighed.

She nodded glumly, looking around at the raucous banquet hall, trying not to be consumed by the creepy sensation of lingering eyes and perverted intent.

“They want to see you struggle, to strive… then they will take everything. This is how these Vash work,” Eruua added with a glare at the upper story. “They do not want to see a future; they dream of the past, of Vashada.”

“I don’t want to die…” Saruuna, who she was now starting to suspect was much younger than Lashaan or Eruuna, despite their somewhat similar appearances, muttered…

“…”

“It is just a dance,” Lashaan scowled, stepping forward. “Better than the alternatives, and at least we were afforded fortune by the Mothers to prepare.”

Eruua just spat on the ground, before stepping forward.

“ZASHRAL! WE WILL DANCE FOR YOU!”

That brought mocking laughter and applause from all around.

“Very good! Very good!”

“Dance for us, savages!”

“Give us a—”

Eruuna’s laughter was nearly drowned out by their taunts but what she said next cut right through.

“WATCH US DANCE AND UNDERSTAND! WE ARE UR’INAN, BORN OF THE BLOOD OF SAR, BORN OF THE BLOOD OF GODS. BOW BEFORE US, WHO ARE THE RULERS OF THIS PLACE!”

While Zashral was still spluttering in shock and the others were standing, Eruuna spun low and vaulted on the spot in a strange, hypnotic dance…

Lashaan exhaled, and she understood at last.

-She actually guessed that no matter what we would end up in a situation like this…

In her heart, she apologised to Lashaan for doubting her previously. Having seen the conduct of those above, she could see why Lashaan had had them do what they did… even if she still had some doubts…

-However, she compared it to the ‘Words of the Heart’. Does that mean that strange series of lines and that oath was like a mantra inheritance?

As she quashed her embarrassment at the far more mobile and somewhat flaunting dance she was now copying from Lashaan and Eruuna, she distracted herself by pondering that. There were certainly similarities. The method of passing on the mantra through the medium of drawing the symbols with the blood of both parties was the main one, but also the searing of the oath had similar undertones.

Ashaal’s expression, which she happened to catch, suddenly went flat as they started to dance in a circle, and she stood up, her expression now a rictus of fury.

“You… you… you…!”

“What is it?” Kozrak frowned.

“You asked us to dance, but we do not trust your words…” Lashaan laughed, a trifle mockingly. “So we will dance, and you will honour. Do you dare break this compact?”

Ashaal stared down at them, then abruptly spun and tore Uicar’s head clean off, dashing it and half his spine onto the balcony in a grizzly spray of gore and bone fragments.

“…”

She flinched, even as she started to mimic the second set of the strange dance Eruuna was now leading, as did quite a few others because the violence was utterly unexpected.

“Sister?” Kozrak stared at her, looking more confused than disturbed.

Ashaal stared at the five of them for a long moment then threw back her head and started to laugh. Before sitting back in her chair, ignoring the headless corpse of the former ‘Master’ of the island, who was presumably responsible for organising this banquet.

Zashral edged sideways, only to freeze as Ashaal reached over and put a hand on his arm.

“Stay to the end, young Warleader.”

“Guard,” Ashaal said to the bronze armoured figure standing in the shadows of a pillar near her.

“Yes, Master?”

“Go find Uicar’s family, his friends, anyone he was associated with, his fucking dog even. All of them are to be dead before we leave, his house razed, his wealth you can do with as you like. This town has a new Master, one the Great Mother will appoint as she sees fit.”

“YES, MASTER!”

The guard saluted and then, without any warning at all, stabbed a stunned male Ur’Vash ‘noble’ in a loose-fitting yellow and red gown who had been pouring himself a cup of wine straight through the head.

“…”

The exchange, immediate stabbing and all, carried easily through the whole courtyard, which was cast into complete and rather shocked silence for a full ten seconds she guessed as they kept dancing, then utter chaos broke out as Ur’Vash started to either run or grab weapons to kill those presumably associated with the former Master of the town.

“What Mother of Blood to lead their dance,” Lashaan’s voice echoed sonorously through the courtyard.

“What Mother of Dance to rouse their hearts…” Eruuna added, picking up the refrain.

“What Mother of Fire to kindle their souls…” Saruuna murmured.

Thankfully, it wasn’t difficult at that point to pick up the lyrics and sing along.

“They live their days and dance their nights… and in the end, all find their rest as promised, beneath the potter’s field… unknowing that the sky weeps and the world is red.”

As they sang and the chaos unfolded, she was struck by the disturbing double meaning behind the lyrics. On the one hand they espoused the passage through life… and yet at the same time they also evoked a bloody curse, a play within which all things were caught, eternally processing through blood and fire and dance.

In that fashion, they danced, she guessed, until the stars had come out overhead, endlessly echoing that strange refrain. The bloodshed had sorted itself out after about ten minutes and a new Master, looking very much like he was an unwilling recruit, was handed, with some ceremony, the golden mask that had belonged to the previous one, still covered in Uicar’s blood, and saluted by all those present.

Zashral had looked decidedly annoyed throughout the whole proceedings as well, so she could only guess that this had led to some rather unintentional political coup.

Nobody came to stop them, or interfered with them at all after that point. In fact, she was pretty sure that they were being either purposefully ignored or someone, probably Ashaal she presumed, was deliberately ensuring that the dance and the words that came with it didn’t get noticed.

~ Lin Ling – Prison is kind of boring, except when it’s not ~

Stood in the small courtyard, restrained by the four ‘guards’ and the obnoxious spears they wielded, Lin Ling found herself wondering in far too much detail about all the ways she was going to ruin this place if she ever got free. She was also quietly annoyed at the memories, the later ones mainly, for being so caught up in their hatred of basically everything that they had never thought to mention that a metal ore like the one in the spears and armour of the guards actually existed.

It did make her ponder if they… well, some of them, might actually be doing it on purpose – some kind of petty vengeance over her casting away the more ‘draconic’ aspects of their heritage in her tribulation in the battle to become something rather unique.

In any case, ‘Orichalcum’, or ‘Aurichalcum’ as some of the older memories termed it, was a mineral with an innate affinity for interfering with all Auric principles.

The name meant ‘Mountain Copper’ but the name held nuance she would not have guessed had the memories not conveniently coughed it up about two seconds before she very foolishly thought about letting the guards stab her to ruin their weapons and help them escape. ‘Mountain’ had its origins in the word ‘Auros’ or ‘Oros’, which was again Mountain, but it referred to a very specific mountain associated with a passage between life and death in a place she had never heard of, called Phrygia. ‘Copper’ similarly held an ancient meaning of opposing sight – apparently because it was used in mirrors a lot.

Setting aside the weird name and some very confusing historical facts, the mineral was one of a set of seven valued in the ancient times for their properties regarding the something known as the seven fundamental tenets of being. In this instance Orichalcum was an anathema to beings whose souls rather than their physical bodies were associated with their longevity – this included, on a certain level, things like Blood Memories.

In short, Orichalcum was the metal most beloved of those who wanted to slay ‘monsters’.

She had a disturbing hunch that this might also include cultivators who had swapped their vital primacy from their physical bodies to their Nascent Souls and didn’t want to test it in these circumstances.

The presence of a small cohort of orcs armed with and armoured in it, when combined with the accursed soul sense diffusing wards that sat on every building in this place, also explained how Udrasa was controlling these swamps so effectively.

The result: all she could do for now was go along with things, play the nice little sheep and wait for the wolves to let their guard down and snap like she was the northern tiger made manifest when the opportunity arose. And hope that everyone else didn’t get killed before that opportunity arrived.

That was the problem, really.

Standing in the humid night air, listening to raucous music of the ‘banquet’ in the distance, it was impossible for her not to get drawn back to those dark memories of her time being held by Di Ji and the powers behind him. Di Ji had been arrogant, but the cruelty had not been his. That was what disturbed her most about those memories. The cruelty, beyond what was done to her, had been to show her that he was just as much a prisoner in a cage as she.

-And here, now… is it that I am seeing the same cage? she pondered, watching the Ur’Inan stand there, shaking and weak in the darkness.

-The imagination and the mind are a far crueller curse than reality… What is real… what is not… what did I imagine, what was imagined for me and what was real, but I hoped was only imagined.

Her answer had been rather simple in the end – fortuitous, even – because by the time she found it events had moved so far past that point that it was simply a thing trying to drag her down. Here and now, though, having watched for almost two days what Quazam had engineered, she was left with one abiding impression.

-Quazam understands cruelty.

That thought returned like a broken refrain – she had seen it with the prisoners in the boats, with the way she revealed Juni and Chunhua as ‘Human’. Whatever was going on here was also, certainly, something like that as well.

-And I hope we outlast it…

-Ah…

She closed her eyes for a moment and wished she didn’t have memories tens of thousands of years old in her head, that she could just be a young woman who thought stupid things and didn’t intuitively make leaps of logic like she just had with the help of those self-same memories.

-Quazam understands cruelty… and hope is the single greatest weapon to be wielded to that end.

A youthful figure stalked out of the darkness to stare at those in the square. She didn’t recognise him, but the guards clearly did, because they stepped forward.

“Young Warleader, this is not a place for you to be,” the lead guard said softly.

“So these are the others?” the figure laughed, looking around. “The rest of the savages that that witch Quazam has grasped for whatever she is plotting?”

“You know we cannot speak of it, young Warleader,” the chief guard said curtly.

“It’s fine,” the youth laughed and his hand lashed out.

A moment later there was a thud and she saw the body hit the far wall. The other local guards all took a step back.

“It is fine, if you do not speak of it… right?” the figure chuckled.

“Do not,” the guard next to her, holding one of the spears, spoke at last.

“Who is this then?” the youth, tall, with black and gold tattoos and rather pointed facial features, walked forward out of the darkness to stand a few metres away from them, staring at her with undisguised interest.

“None of your business,” one of the other guards retorted curtly.

“Just a guard… dares to speak back to me?” the ‘young Warleader’ laughed again and she realised at last why he seemed too weird – he was drunk, or otherwise intoxicated.

He stood there for almost two minutes, swaying slightly, then turned to look at the other restrained Ur’Inan and the twelve other prisoners.

“Guards, take these four to my chambers,” the young Warleader pointed to the two female ‘prisoners’ and the other two younger Ur’Inan women who had not been taken away to the banquet with Juni and Chunhua.

“That is not permitted,” the guard beside her repeated. “Do not overstep.”

“Or what…? You think I am afraid of that witch?”

“Young Warleader, please reconsider…” one of the local guards also muttered.

“…”

“Well?” the young Warleader ignored both sets of guards and instead turned to the shadows of the doorway he entered by.

“Please, young Warleader,” another entreated, “this is ill advised?”

The guard holding the spear beside her just laughed and shook his head.

“You think mere guards are allowed to… to advise me?” the drunk Warleader laughed mockingly.

“…”

“Do you want to end up like your friend over there?”

“No… young Warleader, we are only thinking of you,” another muttered.

“…”

She didn’t need to see the broken remains of the unfortunate guard who had just done his—

There was a *shufft* sound and every guard in the hall, including the four restraining her, collapsed, beheaded.

*Urk* she grimaced as all four spears shifted in half a finger’s width, physically drawing blood around her neck from the thin cuts they had caused.

“As I saaaaid… it’s fine,” he laughed, looking around and lowering the blade. “You just can’t tell anyone…”

He stared at her, and then at the bodies of the four guards who had been restraining her with a frown.

After a few moments, eight more figures in armour bearing the same insignia that the Warleader had tattooed on his body stepped forward. Three of them grabbing the younger Ur’Inan women, leaving only Naakai, while two more grasped the pair of female prisoners. All five were forcibly dragging them away like they were stunned cats.

“Aiiii…” the youth shook his head and looked around once more before kicking a beheaded body.

Walking over to stand before her, he poked one of the guards’ bodies who didn’t so much as budge.

“Such a pity. Though you’re ugly, you still have a good body,” he smirked, reaching past the guards to cup her chin for a moment.

-Such a pity I am stuck here or I’d rip you limb from limb and use your corpse as a cauldron for more blood, she replied in her own head.

“Young Lord, we cannot linger,” one of the guards frowned. “Your absence will be marked if you are gone for too long.”

“Ah well, the night waits for no one,” he sighed, turning on his heel, followed by the other four guards. At the exit he paused and turned to look back at her. “Tell that old bitch Ashaal I enjoyed her party a lot. Her dancers were a lot of fun… With this I hope she will really appreciate how much I enjoyed the banquet.”

“…”

She stared after him as his mocking laughter faded away into the night air, replaced only by the unnerved sobbing of the remaining Ur’Inan as they collapsed to the ground, freed from their restraints.

“That scum… I’ll…”Teshek gasped.

“You’ll what?” Caanar scowled, turning to look at her and then stopping stone still.

“Well, that was kind of stupid of him,” one of the heads of the masked guards laughed from the ground nearby.

“He is only a kid. Believes the things his momma told him, probably,” the second sneered.

“More like believes what his little Zashral tells him,” the first grumbled.

“So what do we do now?”

“You, Ur’Inan, pick my head up sharpish and put it back on my body,” the nearest guard said to Caanar.

“You… what are you…” another of the Ur’Inan hunters backed up and then froze.

“Wh-what?” Teshek stared in shock.

She sighed inwardly as all the other Ur’Inan who had been momentary ‘freed’ were frozen once again by the ‘strength’ of the four guards also restraining her. With her night vison she could see clearly that their wounds were bleeding, so likely they were not actually ‘undead’.

“You are only permitted to move in the service of Quazam, Great Mother to the Masters,” one of the other heads laughed. “This is the Will of Quazam. Your meagre means are not enough to dare defy her.”

“…”

In the end, they all just found themselves stood there like that, in silent tableau, the Ur’Inan unwilling to replace the heads on the corpses and after a while the heads themselves stopped talking as well. That left a rather disturbing silence, broken only by the clink of metal on some of the flags and the sighing wind in the night air until the guard changed some three hours later.

At that point all hell broke loose.

…

“So, let me get this clear,” Ashaal stated flatly, pacing back and forth under the light of the blazing bonfire on the watchtower above them. “That brat Zashral waltzed in here, executed every guard within the courtyard, walked off with 5 prisoners, spouted some crap about ‘enjoying the banquet’ and is now holed up in the Grass Star compound?”

“Yes, Master,” the leader of the replacement guards grovelled, his shadow twisting weirdly in the darkness.

“Perhaps you can explain it to me… clearly…” Ashaal repeated, pausing again from her pacing in front of the bowing guard. “He is holed up in the Grass Star compound? On the other side of the town… yes?”

“…”

“Why?” Ashaal’s voice could have cut glass at this point.

“Why—” the guard leader rather foolishly repeated, though he never finished because Ashaal stamped on his head, shattering it like a rotten spirit fruit.

Quite a few others flinched, which she found rather amusing, because she had no sympathy left for these orcs at this point.

“I reiterate, can someone explain it to me clearly?” Ashaal asked again, staring around at the assembled ‘nobles’ of the island town.

“We… have committed a crime,” one of them mumbled at last.

“Right… you have committed a crime,” Ashaal mimed back.

“Sister… enough,” Kozrak finally spoke. “This town is only allied to Udrasa, and they do not want a war with Kutan, beyond the marshes.”

“Is Kutan going to come here and fucking care about their shithole?” Ashaal snarled, shaking her masked head. “Their soldiers cannot even walk in a straight line through a muddy puddle or row boats. What are they going to do to you lot, on this festering dunghill 70 miles inside the riverlands?”

“You… you… you… you… and you,” she pointed almost randomly to five of the assembled ‘nobles’. “Either Zashral is here, with or without limbs, I really don’t care, in 20 minutes, or your families are going the same way as that of Uicar. Do I make myself clear?”

“Perfectly…” those singled out mumbled, bowing deeply.

“To fail is to disrespect me. To disrespect me is to disrespect Udrasa…” Ashaal added with a glower. “Do you understand what it means to disrespect Udrasa?”

“…”

There was a general scramble as various people rapidly fled the hall.

-I wonder how many will flee the town rather than fight that Warleader, she mused.

-Most of them, one of the older memories sneered.

-They stink of fear…

-Mud… shit… they are born of it; they are it, another added.

-Yes, yes… she sighed inwardly, I get it. You really don’t like them.

“Most of them will flee, you know,” Kozrak sighed as four more spear guards with the Orichalcum weapons and armour trotted in.

-Ah, replacements for my headless bunch, she guessed – rightly, as it turned out, having largely tuned those oddities out.

“So?” Ashaal shrugged. “They die here, or they die there. It matters not.”

“However, if they die out in the swamp, in boats laden with their family treasures it will be a pain. This place is strategically useful, but more so, their hoarded wealth is just as…”

“Yes, I get it,” Ashaal spat, waving to two of the boat guards. “You two, go to the docks, get those guarding our vessel. Anyone getting on a boat bigger than their cock, kill them.”

“Yes, Master,” the guards saluted and trotted off.

“Where is Quazam anyway?” Kozrak frowned.

“…”

“I informed her. She simply said she was not to be disturbed and we could deal with it as we saw fit,” Ashaal grunted, returning to pacing as they all looked on. “Not to mention, we cannot leave while this accursed mist is here. Yesterday was disturbing.”

She had to wonder about that as well, although it was taking a back seat to all the other stuff going on at this point. Without soul sense, the memories had little if anything to share on what that might be, except perhaps a neonate or a hydra. However, in their view, no hydra below three heads would come near this kind of outfit and any over three would not care to bother with small prey like them in any case, not unless they walked right into it.

“…”

They continued to stand there as 20 minutes came and went, with, rather predictably, no sign of the ‘Warleader’ being brought. Four of the five who had been taken were returned, however, and dumped on the ground for all of them to see. They did still ‘live’; however, they had been brutally mistreated to a point that seriously tempted her self-control.

“Not even good for bait,” Ashaal sighed, walking over to one of the young women and poking them with her foot.

-Weak, one of the dragon memories sneered – at her rather than the Ur’Inan, for her concern over them as much as anything she guessed.

-Shut up, she sent back, a bit more forcefully than she usually did, not having the patience to humour their rather twisted world view.

-Or what? You will…

-You need us now more than we need you, another haughtily remarked.

-Do not push it, little lizard, one of the older memories stepped in, which was a surprise. Usually they didn’t bicker amongst themselves…

-Huh… she stared inwardly at them, frowning now, because the more she considered everything, the more certain she became that this was abnormal.

-Is this related to the wards? she asked generally.

-It could be. This place is wrong…

-The land is broken, another mused.

-The wards are stolen gifts… another added, which was a refrain so familiar she nearly…

-Wait, wait… stolen? Which gifts? she shot back, but that voice had already drifted off again in the morass of lizard memories.

-Are you old ancestors or monkeys! she complained.

They largely ignored her and went back to talking among themselves, so all she could do was observe, whereupon another odd thing soon emerged.

-I am sure there were more older voices early on? she frowned, trying to identify them variously.

“Where is the fifth one?” Kozrak asked.

“Apologies, Master,” the leader of the guards who had brought the four bodies replied, bowing down. “There were only four.”

“At least it’s one of the prisoners,” Ashaal grunted, still apparently furious.

“And they survived their trip into the mist,” Kozrak mused. “How unfortunate for them.”

“Hah. I guess,” Ashaal sneered. “Maybe when we get Zashral we can send him out as bait. I quite like that idea…”

“Masters! Masters!” One of the ‘nobles’ came scrambling in, pale-faced.

“What is it?” Ashaal sighed, turning back to face them.

“Za- that vermin… he has departed. His boat is not at the western dock and none of his guards are there – those left behind merely wear his colours.”

“…”

“Cannot even keep him here… useless,” Ashaal appeared beside the unfortunate messenger like a ghost and tore his head straight off, casting it against the wall where it remained lodged, expression fixed in disbelief.

It was mildly disturbing how little that bothered her, she realised. That said, part of it was that this lot seemed to deserve each other in very many ways. Even without the memories hissing bile in her ear about them she would have not had to reach deep to find only disgust for them at this point.

-If it had been these kind of orcs we met first, I suppose we would have had…

-Actually… it was, she corrected herself, recalling ‘which’ they had in fact met first. The only difference was that this lot were just brutal and decadent, not obviously touched by the defiling curse.

-Which is in itself weird, she realised, finally putting her mental finger on what had been bugging her for two days straight.

-They are decadent, cruel, ruthless, greedy, disregard their kith and kin, seek dominion over others, keep slaves and do worse… yet they are not touched by that kind of curse when everything in my memories says they should be flaying the hides of their own firstborn for underwear at this point?

“…”

-Why?

The memories also shrugged somewhat collectively, observing merely that the act of looking for rational amid degenerate, mud-born lunatics was…

-Seriously, just cut that out! she shot back.

In the end, no answer was forthcoming and Ashaal and the others departed, presumably for somewhere a bit more luxurious to order around miserable orcs she guessed. Eventually, after an hour or so, the others were moved into a room where presumably they could be guarded with fewer guards, while she was escorted into a different one, with four guards that were no longer headless.

After that, she spent the rest of the day and the whole of the next night in what she could only describe as almost stressfully boring circumstances, stood in an empty mud-brick room with four spears to her neck, unable to move, unable to speak and without any real grasp of what was going on elsewhere.

Her only companions were the odd intonations of bells and the changing light levels to keep track of the passage of time – and the occasional, near phantasmal hissing of the wind through the courtyard, which the longer she was forced to hear it, started to make her feel like even it was laughing at her and her pathetic circumstances somehow.

~ Juni – Mist upon the Waters ~

Departing the town, on the boat once more, having spent all of the day after their nightmarish turn at the banquet standing in an empty room unable to speak or move and alone with her thoughts, Juni found that she had never actually found out what it was called. That was an oddly fitting end to what had been a roundly vile experience.

She still had no idea where they were going, or what Quazam, who had appeared on the morning of the second day and simply told them they were all to get on the boat again, even wanted out of them either.

Now, it was like she had gone back in time two days as she was kneeling on the deck, forced to look down the whole time, which was mildly nauseating even with her current cultivation after a while, with only the *clop* of oars in the water and the lapping of water against its sides. Sadly, her memories had also not gone back two days as well. The anger of Ashaal over what Lashaan had perpetrated had only been eclipsed by her anger over what that Orc Zashral had done.

It proved clearly what Lashaan and Eruuna had said back at the banquet, but that did not make it any more pleasant.

-Would it have made any difference?

‘Bright Heart Shifting Steps’ was silent, or at least noncommittal on it.

-If we had not had that good fortune to be left alone, would I be the one weeping there, not Kaaru, Asara or Elazra?

It was an impossible answer, yet she suspected she would not, just because of how Quazam seemed to value them as captives for some reason, but Lashaan, Eruuna and Saruuna would likely not have been so lucky… or would they?

-Is that the point, somehow? Is that the lesson in this cruelty, if there even deserves to be one?

That was a different kind of errant thought, something looking for ‘reason’ in madness, where based on her previous experiences, she knew there to likely be none.

‘The powerful do what they do, because they can,’ her father had once said. ‘We try to live moral lives, but with age and power comes dissociation. You do not have to have lived a thousand years to see it either, just be older or richer than the person standing next to you.’

“The mist comes again,” one of the guards said.

“…”

The others on the boat just sighed and stared at the prisoners. All of them had ‘done their time’ on a boat now, leaving only Ur’Inan and them… or guards.

“Could it be it’s just normal mist?” one of those with Azuum muttered.

She had, she realised, nearly forgotten that that group, including Uaazar, were actually along with them. They had stayed separate to them in the town and if they had been at the ‘banquet’ she had not marked them. They looked no less uneasy now, however.

“Send out them,” Kozrak pointed at Azuum after a moment.

“W…what?” Azuum stammered, before bowing deeply.

“Master Kozrak?” one of the others behind Azuum stammered.

“Decide amongst you which will go, I care not,” Ashaal chuckled. “Either way, it is your honour to serve the Great Mother, Mother to the Masters.”

“Honour to the Great Mother, Mother of the Masters…”

That refrain creeped her out every time, and she could not tell why.

“Why… Why do we… and not those prisoners?” one stammered.

“They may have to go again, but you are here to do your duty as citizens of Udrasa, are you not?” Ashaal smirked. “Incidentally, you have just used up the one time in your pathetic lives you may talk back to me. Do so again and I will make you understand regret?”

“You are a citizen of Udrasa. You serve, and you honour the city… yes?” Kozrak grinned.

“Honour to Udrasa…” Azuum nodded.

“Then either get in the boat… and row, or I throw you over to swim,” Ashaal snapped. “Now, before the mist gets denser.”

“As you command, Master,” Azuum bowed, still shaking.

When he stood, his eyes immediately found the victim she had suspected would be selected the second this exchange began.

“Uaazar, get in the boat. It is your Honour to serve,” Azuum stated flatly.

“…”

-Hah, hahaha… She could only laugh in her heart at that. Azuum had not even hesitated before kicking Uaazar under the cart.

“…”

“You wish to be of service? Make up for your previous mistake?” another sneered. “Get on that boat and row, row for all of us, who are helping you so.”

“This is your Honour, is it not, as a citizen of Udrasa?” the thin one, the shopkeeper, smirked, though she could feel the fear echoing in them as well.

Uaazar stared flatly at the group, then at the boat—

“They have spoken. Get on the boat,” Ashaal smirked. “You are all citizens of Udrasa, so serve.”

Uaazar stared for a long moment at Ashaal then at Azuum and then spat on the deck before pushing the boat over the side and jumping into it.

Her position didn’t allow her to see him row off, but she heard the sound of the oars move into the distance. And the nervous laughter and muttered assurances of the Ur’Inan from the city that this was ‘a service Uaazar was honoured to make’.

-Though am I any different? that errant thought muttered.

“…”

Uaazar did indeed do the ‘turn’ for all of them, rowing for almost two hours before returning, also unharmed. During that time, the errant thoughts pried mercilessly at that comparison, that she was like Azuum and the others, for what she had ‘done’, for how her action had led those other four… five even, to be taken by Zashral and mistreated until they barely lived.

Those four now lay like broken puppets by the other Ur’Inan, hovering between life and death. The only reason she could think for their being brought along was that it served as a reminder to everyone else that there was only one power here, and however illogical those choices might occasionally be, Quazam’s word was the only one that held any finality.

After that, the other ‘prisoners’ were made to go again, the first one casting a very evil look at Azuum and his group, and like this they continued until well after midday, when ghostly shadows as tall as pagodas slid into view amid the misty reed beds. These, to her surprise, turned out to be two actual pagodas or a building very much like it. When one finally entered her field of view, it was about ten stories high.

Their style, while odd, was reminiscent of the shrine they had been taken to by the Ur’Inan and, while much of their original structure had been ruined and the roofs looked a bit weird, they had been crudely repaired with mud brick and scavenged stone.

As they passed, she saw they were situated on raised mounds either side of the channel. Not initially visible, there were dozens of other smaller ones set out amid the actual reeds, most no more than three metres high, and all carrying tattered yellow flags bearing the signs of various towns she supposed. The large pagodas only had banners with the sign of Udrasa and that which the boat they were on bore.

“There is a boat ahead!” the guard keeping watch over the river way ahead and the prisoner that was currently rowing ahead abruptly called.

“A boat?” the bemusement in Kozrak’s voice was palpable as he walked up to the front and stared into the swirling mists.

“Yes. I am sure I saw one, a smaller vessel with markings not of our towns,” the guard stated respectfully.

“Do you see anything?” Kozrak asked Ashaal, who was now just leaning at the side of the vessel, staring at the reeds.

“…”

Ashaal stared into the distance ahead of them and shook her head. “No boat. Must be shadows in the fog…”

“Apologies,” the guard saluted. “My mistake has shamed Udrasa.”

Kozrak shook his head and ignored the guard.

“Great Mother, do you…?”

“Keep on,” Quazam said diffidently.

“As the Great Mother commands,” Kozrak acknowledged.

They passed two more ruins, smaller pagoda-like buildings again covered in symbols and flags, before arriving at a sprawling town built on what had to be a proper island in the swamp.

Much like every other one, the same ritual was repeated. The local officials came out, there was much bowing and saluting of Quazam and the Masters and they were escorted to a courtyard and made to stand there in silence, with Lin Ling escorted to a second one, always kept apart from the others. Chunhua had also acquired a personal guard, courtesy of Ashaal she suspected, after her use of the parasol qi.

That was the state of affairs for the next several hours, during which all she could do was use ‘Bright Heart Shifting Steps’ to consolidate her fortuitous opportunity to advance her core formation. During the battle her qi in her dantian had finally coalesced again, spinning for 21 rotations before dispersing all that energy back through her body in a purifying wave that had done several thousands of cycles’ worth of incremental ‘realignment’ to the way her qi flowed through her meridians, near as she could tell.

“You, come!”

Her thoughts were broken, bizarrely, by the command of a local guard who had come to stand before her.

“You are commanded to come!”

Blinking, she found she could move again; however, in the same instant, the disorientation of being stuck staring at the same thing for hours on end almost certainly caught up with her, because she could have sworn that the eleven prisoners were all laughing at her.

With a start, she focused on them again, and found that they were all as they had been, standing mute along the wall, as statue-like as everyone else.

-Faugh!

She shook herself mentally and looked again, but there was again nothing untoward, beyond the weird shifting of the shadows.

-If I had any faith in you at all I’d ask you to smite it… and every worthless orc in it with misfortunes sent by the nameless fate itself! she cursed in her heart.

The guard led her, Chunhua and the three Ur’Inan to a room and they were once again dressed in gold jewellery. This time, however, it wasn’t to dance, but the five of them were made to wait on Ashaal and Kozrak in a great courtyard where almost two hundred Ur’Vash in opulent dress talked and laughed and listened to the strange slightly discordant music while roundly admiring how ‘Udrasa, Seat of the Masters’ had tamed some of the rumoured crazy mages.

Quazam also sat in attendance on the upper story. She took no part in the banquet below and mostly lounged on a couch being fed delicacies by various buff Ur’Vash youths. The only time she really engaged with the banquet was to watch a duel in the cleared area of the lower hall between two warriors. The loser wasn’t killed but did have to be carried out of the hall, to much applause.

The winner was escorted up to her afterwards and the curtains closed, but she didn’t have to put in much guesswork regarding the winner’s ‘reward’.

In truth, Kozrak and Ashaal spent most of their time talking about how bothersome the ‘Golden Flowers’ tribe was or making her and Chunhua pour wine for various other masked dignitaries while the three Ur’Inan danced on tables around the innermost part of the courtyard or also poured wine.

The gist seemed to be that the whole circumstance, crazy mages having a weird origin aside, was a plot by the southern towns of the Grass Stalker region to capitalise on a moment of weakness by the region’s Warleader. In a way, she could see how that might be seen to be the case – their status as humans was never broached, at least that she heard.

The whole experience was profoundly unnerving, in as much as nothing untoward happened, to them anyway, except that she and the others had to accept being leered at by Ur’Vash for hours on end as she poured wine adorned only in a gossamer thin robe and a bunch of gold jewellery. Other dancers brought in did ‘entertain’ widely, although they mostly seemed enthusiastic about it.

The result was that by the time the moon rose in the small hours of the morning she was unsure if she should be outraged, mortified, embarrassed, angry or just no longer care about something as seemingly paltry and inconsequential as her own modesty. Her mental state was not aided in that regard by constantly being in the company of Lashaan, Eruuna and Saruuna, which continually reminded her of the miserable debasement of the other three Ur’Inan womenfolk and the two prisoners.

With the rising of the moon, all of the great fires on the tops of the towers across the town were lit, to a lot of cheering and dancing by the Ur’Vash at the party as well as salutes and the distant banging of drums.

“HONOUR TO THE GREAT MOTHER, MOTHER OF THE MASTERS!”

“STRENGTH TO THE GREAT MOTHER, MOTHER OF THE MASTERS!”

“FORTUNE TO THE GREAT MOTHER, MOTHER OF THE MASTERS!”

All those in the party raised drinks with both hands and saluted the upper story, where Quazam, still naked apart from her mask and her flowing dark hair, was now leaning on the balcony watching the fires.

In the distance, various bells and gongs also rang, their discordant tones blending together to make her ears ring in a way that was very discomforting. She was also left pondering, yet again how… off the grand salutation felt. It was almost like she had heard something like it before, which should, reasonably be rather unlikely. Even so, it was like an itch at this point that was impossible to scratch.

While she had no idea what the symbolism involved was, what did immediately strike her was that the efficacy of her cultivation dropped… noticeably in fact, as soon as the smoke started to pall in the night air, drifting like a haze over the whole city.

It took her a moment to realise why, before recalling what Lin Ling had told her over a week ago now, about the optimal conditions for her art… Staring up at the flickering flames and the slightly acrid yet disturbingly fragrant smoke from the great braziers on the towers across the town, she was stuck by how… invisible the night sky above it and the moon were.

Lashaan, also looking up, had an expression between doubt and a scowl on her face for a brief moment before a passing noble grasped her by the thigh and made her pour wine for him.

“You, mage, you pour,” another grunted waving at her to come over.

Sighing mentally, all she could do was keep it in mind and wonder what the purpose was as she made her way over to that table and carefully poured out a pitcher of the thick, syrupy fruit honey wine for those there, while ignoring what they were having the dancers do.

“It pity,” one of them laughed in bad Easten. “I bet she very good with body like that.”

“Shush… they are the Masters’ property,” another muttered, in the local tongue.

“Honour to the Masters,” the first speaker chuckled, saluting vaguely in the direction of Ashaal, Kozrak and the leader of this town who were conferring about something at a table in the middle of the courtyard.

Eventually, the party did finish and they were escorted back to their prison courtyard and left to stand in silence as the shadows danced disturbingly all around them from the shifting illumination of the torches in every alcove.

When morning came, however, it brought two surprises. The first was rain, actual rain with the mists. The second was that when they were put back on the boat, Quazam was not with them – merely Ashaal, Kosrak and the others.

“Where is the Great Mother?” Azuum asked with a deep bow, clearly also curious.

“…”

Ashaal just stared at him, her eyes cold within her mask, and Azuum cowered.

“Myriad apologies, Master, this servant spoke out of turn.”

“See that you do not do so again, or you will row,” Ashaal smirked, making Azuum flinch.

They again set out, through the town this time and beyond another set of walls and back out into the mist. The reed beds were basically the same; the only difference was that that the mist was thinner and the humidity even more miserable because of the warm rain.

They passed several small fortress-like islands and even roads amid the swamp, she fancied – causeways perhaps that linked the islands together. They travelled on for maybe an hour along that waterway past occasional towers that rose in the middle distance, barely visible through the rain thanks to their burning braziers.

Finally, when it was almost mid-morning she guessed, they came in sight of what she could only call their likely destination.

The town was massive. It dwarfed the sprawling crescent they had just left and was maybe as big as Udrasa itself. Walls had been built around it, into which were incorporated three more of the ruined pagodas.

More dotted the waterway outside it, festooned with the flapping yellow flags with the symbols of Udrasa. As they drew closer, she could see the central island was another giant stone ruin that the town had basically been built around.

“That boat…” the guard at the rear this time called out.

“…”

She was surprised to find she could turn, as mist suddenly swirled down, much denser than it had since the first day.

“SHIT!” Ashaal snarled, spinning to look at the smaller boat, which currently had one of the prisoners in it.

Turning, she saw that that boat was also lost in the mists that were now sweeping like an avalanche across the reed beds.

The boat picked up speed, the rope going slack.

“There really is a boat,” another guard hissed, turning to point.

“ASHAAL!” a familiar, mocking voice echoed forth.

-Zashral?

“How?” another guard muttered, sounding oddly confused.

“Is he insane? To chase us all the way to the Seat of the Masters?” another guard muttered.

Their own vessel continued to move rapidly between the reed beds, heading for the edge of the town, but she couldn’t help but notice that the one pursuing them was effortlessly catching up, almost as if the mist itself was carrying them.

The Ur’Inan and the other prisoners were also able to move now, she realised, as was Chunhua, though she still had two masked guards pointing spears at her and so hadn’t done more than move a hand.

“ASHAAL, I WILL TAKE YOUR HEAD!”

Zashral’s voice echoed through the mist, merging with it and acquiring a slightly discordant edge.

To their left, she saw one of the smaller pagodas loom out of the mist, and on it…

She nearly had to do a double take. For a split second she fancied she saw a child in a ragged white robe, wearing a bizarre clay mask, sitting on the first story. By the time she focused on that spot, in the swirling mist, they were gone; however, the sighing of the reeds suddenly seemed like echoing, childlike laughter.

“By the Shaper’s Cock… they are here…” Kozrak hissed, striding down the boat and grasping an axe made of the same metal as the spears from the area below where Quazam’s palanquin usually sat.

“Who are…?” one of Azuum’s companions asked, clearly as confused as everyone else. “Zashral?”

Kozrak ignored them, and the boat for that matter, his attention now fixed on the mists swirling all around them.

The smaller boat had closed within 20 metres now, moving with almost unnatural speed through the water, splitting the fog in a wave around it. Zashral, she could see, stood on the prow holding a metal sword, his expression eager. Guards in leather armour also wielding metal swords and shields were lining up behind him, nearly forty all told.

“YOU THINK YOU WILL SURVIVE THIS?” Ashaal roared back, hopping up on the side of their craft and raising a hand…

Whatever she had expected to happen, did not… and Juni found it took her a few seconds to work out what was wrong, and in fact why they had been ‘freed’. The ambient qi was chaotic and unresponsive. She was still able to absorb it, but manipulating it outside her body in the mist was, it turned out, impossible. Even Intent diffused, bizarrely.

{Bright Heart Shifting Steps}

“Ah… shit…” she hissed under her breath as the divination art gave her a very sobering outcome for her survival through the next few minutes.

“Survive?” Zashral laughed, crouching and leaping the last few metres onto their boat, which rocked under the impact.

“You think you are going to survive?”

Ashaal dodged back, then ducked as Kozrak lashed his axe almost straight past her head, at Zashral.

“That isn’t Za—”

“AHAHAAHAaahha…”

Childlike laughter rippled across the boat as she, along with almost everyone else, stared blankly as one of the prisoners, giggling manically, lunged for Kozrak’s arm, blocking the blow.

In that same moment, the whole vessel lurched crazily, the deck tilting in the fog under the force of the other vessel crashing into it.

Taking advantage of the opening, Zashral cut at Kozrak, only for his own strike to be blocked by two of the golden-copper spears of the guards. At that point another of the other prisoners started laughing and staggered up, charging at Kozrak, who had just blocked a second blow from Zashral in the middle of the boat.

Ashaal snarled, stabbing at them as they landed a vicious blow to Kozrak’s side—

In the same instant, the mists themselves collapsed over the whole boat. The world went white as her senses were thoroughly blunted; all she could hear was the thrum of footsteps on the deck, the slash of oars, the muffled clash of steel—

A sword blade scythed at her and she dodged, desperately, only to find it wasn’t aimed at her, but Azuum who had been standing near her. The person who had cast it was Uaazar, who in the mist also seemed kind of off…?

“Eheehehehee.”

The laughter was Uaazar’s voice, yet at the same time it was somehow not, carrying with it the same hollow echo that she had noted before when they travelled through the dense fog.

Scrambling out of the way, she watched as Uaazar grasped Azuum and tore both his arms clean off. Azuum staggered back, blood gushing forth as a fountain almost comically, even as Uaazar spun and smacked one of the guards with an arm, still laughing mockingly in a manner that almost sounded like… a child?

“Lalalaa… we dance in the clouds…”

She spun to find one of the injured female prisoners had stood up, her face a twisted grin. The Ur’Inan were backing away rapidly, terror etched on their faces.

“What…?” she tried to speak but no words came out, her voice somehow robbed by an icy thread within the mist itself.

“We dance in the waters…”

“Mahahahah!”

Another prisoner grabbed two shocked guards and just jumped overboard into the fog, laughing like a child playing a prank. There was no sound of bodies hitting the water, just ripples in the mist.

“We danced in the morning…”

“Danced with the sun…”

“Ran with the Hunt…”

“Played pipes and sang for fun…”

The nonsensical lyrics tinkled strangely, making her skin grow cold as she heard them and for the second time she saw a child, this time seated on the rail before Quazam’s throne, again wearing a strange earthen mask painted white and tattered white garments. In her hands was a flute made of reeds that she was blowing.

“Dance… dance… whatever you may be…”

“We are the daughters..."

"...Dancers of the Hunt, said she…”

One of the guards stumbled out of the mist, a prisoner grasping at him even as the guard stabbed his body desperately… Rather than blood, however, what flowed out of the prisoners’ wounds was more mist. It lacerated the guard, sank into his body, and in a singular horrific moment she understood as the guard’s skin sloughed off of him, still holding the spear, and spun to strike at another guard. What remained collapsed to the deck, a mess of disarticulated blood, bone and gore.

"Dance... dance so merrily and free!"

In the same instant, another young girl crouched over it, her mask half pushed up, a bow like that a young girl might be given for her first archery lesson in one hand and a quiver across her back. As she watched, the ethereal figure picked up the heart and took a bite, savouring it, blood running down beneath her mask.

With a scream, another guard stabbed at the girl, who faded away into the fog with an amused giggle long before the blow ever landed. In the same instant another prisoner grasped that guard around the neck, spinning them in a circle, laughing like they had just met an old friend.

Someone, Chunhua she realised, hauled her sideways suddenly as another of the guards rolled across the deck towards them, grappling with two of the ‘prisoners’ who were physically pulling his skin off his body as if it was a tunic.

“SAVE ME, GREAT MOTHER!” someone else wailed in the shadows at the far side of the boat.

“He wants Quazam to save him?” a mocking voice giggled from the prow of the boat, where another of the young girls alighted, skipping across the swirling mists as if they were solid ground.

“SAVE US, GREAT MOTHER. MOTHER TO THE MASTERS!” the call echoed in the mist only to be met with more mocking laughter from every direction.

“Quazam cannot even save itself…” another voice echoed from behind her.

“Quazam? Quazam? Where art thou Quazam?”

“Hhahahahaa….”

The laughter of one of the guards who had already been claimed was cut off as Zashral was kicked across the boat and smashed into them with enough force to totally deflate the macabre thing, turning it into a tattered remnant of an orc.

The mist within it bled away, accompanied by what almost sounded like a sorrowing sigh. Kozrak stalked after him, snarling in fury, not even pausing as he swung his axe and beheaded the prisoner still dancing in circles with that screaming guard.

“DIE!”

She flinched, but there was no intent in Kozrak’s roar, just pure frustration as Zashral skipped back again laughed manically, making an obscene gesture—

Ashaal stabbed him in the head, slicing Zashral’s body, only for him to grasp the blade with his hand and bend her arm backwards as her blade opened up a vicious flesh wound and then bounced off bone.

“You’re not…?” someone stammered at Zashral who just laughed and kicked Kozrak back.

“I said I would take your head, Ashaal,” Zahral sneered, stepping to the side and reversing the sword he held in his hand.

In the next instant, however, Kozrak’s axe hit him in in the chest, or an afterimage of Zashral’s chest at any rate—

“Ah… shit,” she heard Naakos, she thought, utter from somewhere behind her as the mist flooded away carried on amused, mocking laughter, even as the axe strike hissed through empty air.

In that instant, she saw their surroundings fully. The boat was beached on the bank, rammed there by Zashral’s boat.

On the pagoda next to them stood 12 young girls, all looking like they were between the ages of eight and nine, with dark, brown or golden hair. All of them were wearing clay masks in the shapes of grinning faces or animals. All of them were armed with weapons – spears, bows, slings, javelins and blades. Some played pipes of reeds, others banged little drums, while one even danced on the very top of the pagoda itself, prancing along the edge of the roof top in defiance of its ruined state.

{Bright He—

She got halfway through trying to use the movement art when the blow from the axe hit the boat deck—

She hit water, the ruins of their side of the boat crashing down around her, serenaded by the laughter of the figures on the pagoda.

~ Han Shu – Throne of Extinction ~

The ‘Throne’ was boring.

This was a conclusion Han Shu found he came to very quickly, though it was in no small part, he suspected, due to the continual, itch like provocation of things ‘trying’ to distract him.

Throwing himself into reading the books had worked, for a while at least. However, circumstances did slowly start to re-intrude.

He had been reasonably good with languages before he wound up in this mess, he had to reflect, but ‘Aeolic’ made his head hurt. There were root similarities to Lataan, Easten as he knew it; however, the syntax structure was odd. Had Origin not taken to speaking entirely in it, he would have never gotten the pronunciation right either, and its grammar was…

Still, that might have been fine, and time just rolled by, except for that critical problem that gnawed at him and was unable to be relinquished once realised: that, well… circumstances were boring.

It didn’t help that he had the awareness that he was being led to be skittish, unable to focus and generally neurotic. The darkness creeping in above was always there, always looking, even if it didn’t seem to see, and it was always trying to get his attention.

There was no letup, and it only got more insidiously subtle as time went on, not helped by the fact that his unspoken impression of his circumstances was that he was ‘screwed’ irrespective of what he did.

Words he learned in Aeolic would put him in mind of scenes from home.

Some bit of food or other, would remind him of a plant or something from West Flower Picking Town.

Shadows cast took on the hue of familiar scenes.

It was impossible to keep track of time, either by design or simply circumstance and once you realised that, it was impossible to gauge how long anything took.

Did learning some word, or sentence, or reading some page of an ancient tale take him ten minutes or ten hours?

He was alone, yet never alone…

It was like going mad, and at a certain point he was not entirely sure he was not going mad.

Origin was there, always there, just doing stuff… or staring at the black cracks in the black vault of the ceiling, which were now at the point where even he could see them and even that became a hang-up after a while.

Whether that was just down to his eyes adjusting to the myriad shades of black, or because they were trying to lead him to pay more attention to them, it was hard to say, but the itch trying to draw him back to thinking about his circumstances only got worse…

And worse.

And worse.

Eventually, it got to the point here he nearly had an induced hallucination or something like it, a sense of the world blurring around him and some spectral hand grasping his head..

“I don’t know what that bitch did… but it seems…”

“Look, just stimulate it like instructed…”

“It’s not working…”

“Bah… bring it. We will get the others…”

“It would have been helpful if we didn’t have to carry this waste…”

Phrases blurred through his mind for a moment—

“Oh come on,” Origin was suddenly standing in front of him, her hands holding his face, making him realise he had collapsed to his knees.

“W-what just…?” he gasped.

“Easy…” Origin was looking at him with narrowed eyes now.“Try it again.”

For a moment, he had awareness that he was lying on a rough mattress, in a building, figures crouched over him… as something clawing and creeping tried to…

His eyes snapped open and he saw the black cracks freeze, barely a hand’s width from his face, Origin still holding him, staring at them.

“…”

The cracks slid away, vanishing into the void as if they never were, but he was not fooled.

“D-did someone just try to forcibly re-associate me with my body?” he gasped at last.

“Yes,” Origin nodded grimly.

“That’s… possible?”

“…”

“Not on its own, but what was done to you is… I won’t condone it by saying it is impressive, but it is comprehensive.”

He nearly asked what might happen if they succeeded, but caught himself, reflecting on what was going on again.

“Why? Is this all for what is in my head?” he asked at last.

“Somewhat,” Origin sighed, sitting back. “But mostly, it is because the people involved are vindictive little shits.”

“I can’t say I disagree there,” he conceded, staring up at the dark vault above.

Abruptly she picked up a random root and threw it at the stele in the middle of the hall, where it splattered rather messily.

“You see, you stupid stele, this is why you should just listen to this big sister.”

Origin stood and dusted herself off, shaking her head. The stele, which had given him the manual originally, was silent.

“I wish they would hurry up,” Origin scowled, staring at the statues of Divide and Cetana. “The longer this goes on, the more problematic this becomes.”

“Fates-thrashed useless… Why is this not working? Isn’t he meant to be one of their fancy clones!”

The words sank through his consciousness with no warning at all, accompanied by a twisting pain in his breast as his awareness of two places seemed to overlap and he was somewhat aware that his body was lying against a wall while someone tried to do something to it with qi.

“Go get ______, you stupid unreading motherless ________. May the _____ take you!”

Origin’s words, spoken in the language he had been learning and with a few words in there he didn’t recognise, made the whole throne shudder briefly and the darkness faded inexplicably as if it was drawn away from their surroundings and into her.

The world around them faded away faintly, a different scene fading into focus like a ghostly mirage. He had seen this a few times before, mostly when she was getting food and once water; however, now, they were in some kind of courtyard.

“We need to hurry up!” a voice was saying nearby. “There is still that Jia Ying and Quan Dingxiang…”

“Liling Mei didn’t go either…”

More figures hurried through the swirling eye into ‘reality’ among them. He thought he saw Ruo Han, Jin Chen and Liao Ying, all looking pretty haggard. Various disciples in robes were pushing them towards the middle of the area.

“What is…?” he trailed off as he realised Origin was standing over him, her hand on his head, and that the scene around them was twisting slowly, his current form slowly moving closer and closer to the ‘him’ that was slumped against the wall.

“…”

“You think a teleport formation can just be triggered on a whim?” a disciple wearing a golden robe snarled from where he was crouching down and putting some spirit stones into what appeared to be a formations disc.

“You worry too much. Jia Ying is barely even an early stage Ancient Immortal, as is Liling Mei, while Quan Dingxiang is injured. They can do formations, but we have been careful.” one of the other cultivators, a youth wearing a reddish brown robe with bronze leaves on it, sneered.

“They will all be focused on that bunch of Sheng dogs anyway,” one of those who had been trying to ‘induce’ his body somehow added.

“Even if they do chase after us, we will be rendezvousing with Senior Huang Jiaosheng’s group to investigate this ruin the Dun Princess is interested in. Are the Dewdrop Sage Sect or Nine Auspicious Moons going to show their faces there?” a disciple in a teal green robe said with a laugh.

“…”

All around them, he saw black cracks sliding into his surroundings, creeping along the edges of things, subtle, hidden, creeping, celestial death from ten thousand directions, seeking a way into…

“Done!” the disciple setting the formation said, standing up.

The two with him pushed him over into the middle of the courtyard as the various betraying disciples clustered around.

Their reflection of the world wavered and the group vanished, but his body remained, which was a surprise, as did Ruo Han and the rest.

“Uh?” he managed to articulate.

“Well, that was surprisingly easy,” a dark-haired beauty dropped off the roof of the nearby building and landed lightly on the ground a few paces away from both versions of him, her dark hair shimmering in the firelight of the torch.

“Uh…” the five remaining disciples stared at them… then her, mute incomprehension written on their faces as the scene faded away and his original surroundings returned, with only the lingering evening heat to tell him that it had not been a figment of his imagination.

“What just happened?” he asked, sweating.

“They tried to ‘activate’ the seal in your body,” Origin sounded disgusted. “It nearly made a bridge into here.”

“And what happens if that does occur?”

Origin just looked at him and sighed, then looked away.

After that, things settled back into the same sort of rhythm, where he maintained a cycle of sorts… worked on the language books, ate a meal, did some exercise… and then tried to sleep for a while. The sleep was hard, but apparently necessary, he had come to realise after a while. The trick was to work himself to near exhaustion and then just sleep for as long as he needed to. On the odd times he did dream, they were never pleasant and always tried to draw him towards things from home, by means fair or foul.

Thankfully, the language did start to get easier, although it was slow going. He had reached the point a while back where he could hold bad conversations in it, if only because Origin refused to talk in anything else, but in the time after that ‘event’ she produced a few other stories and tales – scrolls mainly – and set him to reading them as well. Mostly they were collections of lyric poetry by various authors but predominantly a woman called Sappho and a man called Alcaeus.

In other circumstances, they were not ones he would have favoured, because mainly they appeared to be love poems, or poems that dwelt on turbulent emotions. A few were on political themes, but those largely read like curses, a view he took even more clearly when Origin actually recited a few of them to music on a kind of zither-like harp, so he could get pronunciation right. However, here, in the interminable time, they provided him a curiously vivid outlook into a world he had never seen, people never known and definitely distracted him from his concerns.