We ended up asking for directions to the nearest inn, though the exchange nearly came to blows when the man we asked took offense at Darina’s hard eyes, but luckily, it seemed the locals had extensive experience when it came to controlling their tempers. The situation was helped somewhat when a woman wearing the same kind of long red and white armoured coat that the Blood Marshal had worn made her presence known, one hand casually draped across the pommel of some kind of two-handed scimitar.

After that, the man had quickly forced himself to calmness, shooting fearful glances at the swordswoman, and pointed us in the right direction. As we thanked him – grudgingly - and walked away, I glanced back to see the women – Blood Guard? - staring after us, a wary and considering look painted across her features.

Turning back to watch where we were going, leaning down slightly to speak to the healer’s apprentice in a quiet voice.

“Darina, I know this place is a lot, but try not glare so much. I get the feeling that Tain and his team don’t have any kid gloves, and they’d have to be strong if they’re keeping a whole city in line.”

“Me?! You’re the one looking at everyone like you’re about to try eating them, idiot.”

“I am not looking at anyone like that, Darina.” Is what I said in reply, but as I spoke, I realised that I was lying; I could feel my eyes opened as far as they could, and my brow drawn down over them. As I became aware of these things, I felt my gait shift and normalise, and thinking back I was faced with the fact that I had not so much been walking but stalking. Of course, none of those things changed the fact that my diminutive friend had been glaring, but I had to accept the fact that I was probably being at least as much of a detriment to our continued peace.

“Right. I guess I was. Let’s both try to do better, huh?”

“How about I just take it all out on you?”

I rolled my eyes, doing my best to resist the sudden urge to dare her to do her worst, I accepted that it was probably going to take a while for everyone to acclimatise, and moved on, though I could not keep myself from muttering under my breath.

“At least she’s not moping about any more...”

I think she heard me, as I began to hear the grinding of teeth coming from her direction. I refused to look, knowing that if I made eye contact there was a good chance she was going to punch me. Instead, I turned to Toria, who had been quiet since Tain’s departure.

“How’re you doing, Toria?”

“I’m... fine. I am glad however that I came on this mission, rather than the Unending Flame. I fear he would... not have done well here.”

“That’s Kestin, right? Yeah, I’m pretty sure he’d be in worse shape than you. He didn’t seem the type to control his temper. Or to restrain himself at all.”

Tora offered me a brief glare while her right hand twitched, but she seemed to reign herself back in with some effort, before continuing.

“Kestin's family is very old and powerful, he picked up some bad habits. But he is a good person, underneath it all. He hates injustice, of any kind and would place himself between it and anyone without hesitation.”

“Really? You don’t think the way he reacted to me was a bit unjust?”

“He viewed your – and the other Apexes’ - greeting of our Master to be very disrespectful. And it was. But such is life; while I did not like it, I do not view it as unjust, as he does. If we punished every minor slight, the world would be a far emptier place.”

I did not want to get into talking about the relative displays of deference or offense between Apexes; I was not even really interested in my own. I tried to treat people with respect, but I was not going to bow and scrape ‘just because.’ That might be a foolish notion, on a world where a great many people could just smash me flat for not doing so, but you cannot live your life as a ‘what if.’ Well, you could, as I knew from personal experience, but it sucked, and I had promised myself that I would not make the same mistakes as I had in my previous live.

“Well, ok. But still, he was very... prone to action?”

I received another small glare, but in the end, Toria simply nodded.

“He is.”

“How did the two of you end up apprenticing to Chian, anyway? You seem like very different people.”

“The Paladin chose us.” Toria definitely did not like me referring to her master by name, and I made a note for the future. Normally I would not care that much, but given the place in which we found ourselves, I figured it was best not to press any unnecessary buttons. If I could help it. “She chose the Unending Flame when he volunteered a mistake he had made, while the tournament’s referees had missed it. His family was not happy that he had made the decision to lose the fight, at the cost of the family’s pride. But it was just, and called to our Master. The Sun’s Judgement chose me when she found me defending some of the younger orphans from a much older and stronger street gang.”

It surprised me that Kestin had volunteered himself for a loss, but despite how much of an asshole he had come across as, it made sense that an adherent of the god of Justice – amongst other things – would have to be pretty big on justice. I noted however while she had been relatively descriptive of her fellow apprentice’s recruitment, she had mostly glossed over her own.

“’Other' orphans?”

“I am an orphan; my parents were killed by a corpse cultivator that persisted on this world after the gate closed. All of us were orphaned by the same person.”

“And a street gang were picking on you? What fucking assholes.”

“They thought our parents must have been weak, to fall to a single corpse cultivator, as they were supposedly much weaker than we, on average. They thought that, as such, we must have been weak, and should be... culled.”

“Man, I’m sorry to hear that, Toria. That’s awful. I hope you smashed them flat. Or the... Paladin did, at least.”

“She was not... merciful. She took me as her Apprentice, and took the others into her palace, so they would be fed and clothed until they could form their Foci. They later joined the priesthood.”

I could hear grim satisfaction in her voice as she spoke of the Apex’s lack of mercy, and I wondered what Chian’s abilities looked like; the Sun’s Judgement sounded like it had something to do with light, or heat, but it could easily just be a reference to her god. Either way, Toria’s childhood sounded like it had really sucked, and I was glad the gang got what was coming to them. I was curious about one thing, however.

“I don’t want to open old wounds, but how did a single... corpse cultivator... manage it, if they’re weaker? I’ve heard others speak of the invasion, but nobody ever spoke about their relative strength.”

“... This was not an ordinary member of their ranks. I was not yet born when the war happened, but my parents were among those who were tasked with the aftermath. The corpse cultivators required dead people to gain power, which is where the name comes from, and they were not shy about killing those they called peasants, where they could. But this one was unique, and their corpses were particularly powerful, and unlike the massed armies they had used for the most part, they had abilities. The user was eventually killed by my own Master, in fact. She called them the ‘Crowned in Rotting Stone’, and said they were the equivalent of an Apex.”

“I’m guessing that wasn’t common knowledge? Can’t be weak just because an Apex – or their equivalent – beats you.

“It was not.”

We walked in silence for a while; I had met a gang back in Everwood City, and while they had been fairly unwilling to do anything other than fight me, they had not seemed malicious, though there was the possibility that that was more about my own perception of the event than anything else. While I had adapted, and am continuing to adapt to my new home, I had certainly noticed a distinct difference between my initial reaction to things since my arrival and what they would have been back on Earth. At the time I had met them, I had been still somewhat at the mercy of my new physiology. Perhaps if I met them a month later, their behaviour would have seemed much different.

“What about you?”

I had not been expecting Toria to speak again, given the clipped and terse nature of her last reply and it took me a moment to re-order my thoughts.

“You mean how I became an apprentice?”

“Yes.”

“Well, honestly I’m not sure it was as simple as that. It just... just sort of happened. Where I’m from... people don’t cultivate. I was sent here through other means, and it was a bit of a shock. Walker was the first person I met – he was chasing off a sect that was attacking Everwood City over a pill a local alchemist had created. It was supposed to allow you to gather Experience based on the experiences of the people around you. So, you could sit at the centre of an army and combine their entire cultivation into your own. Anyway, he wiped most of them out – they didn’t seem to really know what an Apex could do-”

“Few do. If an Apex is pushed to intervene, survivors are rare.”

“Right. Anyway, he let their leader go, I guess to sort of alleviate that problem. At the time, I had basically no Experience in my body, though there was a trickle. He was curious, because at my age, with so little Experience, he thought I was a nadir, but I could obviously absorb Experience. He took me in, sort of an experiment, though I think he does have a soft spot for apparent cripples. After that, it just sort of happened. We never agreed to any formal relationship, but here we are.”

“And when was this? It must have been years ago, but I was unaware of the Apex of the Infinite Blades having an Apprentice until we arrived at the Blacksand Citadel.”

“No, nowhere near that long. The days are starting to run a bit together, but I think it was less than half a year ago.”

“Half a year? That’s not possible, especially if as you say you came from a place with no cultivation, and no Experience in your body – which is very strange, by the way.” Toria paused for a moment, and I was about to answer her when she spoke up again. “Did you perhaps take this pill? I had not heard of such a thing, but if it exists it could indeed explain your rapid growth.”

“Nope. Walker said it would have burnt me to a crisp, too much energy for such a weak person to process. My growth is definitely fast, I understand that. I think it’s because everything here is so new to me, that every experience just... supplied more Experience to me. Maybe you’d have the same thing happen, if you went somewhere completely alien. Actually, maybe that’s another reason for the wars? A chance to mix systems, but also to go somewhere new and accelerate growth. Huh.”

“What you say does not seem likely, though I will admit there is a possibility. If you are correct, then surely, we must all experience a boost here, in this strange place?”

“That’s a good point, actually. I think that other than Reff, we’re all limited in our progress by the integration of our Exemplars, but it might be worth you all seeing if there’s a difference in your recovery speed?”

“With restrained curiosity, I will see if my progression though the Foundation stage is improved by our presence here. This place is certainly novel, unlike any place I have visited previously.”

“With shared excitement, this seems like a worthy experiment.”

The risi siblings both actually sounded fairly upbeat about the possibility. Thinking about it, I wondered if being on an entirely new world had impacted their older brother’s ascent to Apex.

For her part, Darina said nothing, though she did look slightly less grumpy, which I was grateful for. I was not sure I could stop myself reacting if she actually attacked me in this place...

“You mentioned other systems? What do you mean?”

I began to explain what I knew about the various systems to Toria, based on what I had learned on my otherworld excursions. I began with the corpse cultivators, as that was a common point of reference, and went from there. She seemed interested, and while my other companions had heard it all before, they still seemed willing to listen again. It was after all, the potential underpinnings of the universe, and if nothing else a distraction from the pervading, if diffuse, rage that hung about the city like a dense mental fog, making our trip to the inn a far less nerve grating experience.