I did manage to find the guard; given the design of the rest of the building, I had expected to find the man secreted away in some disguised cubicle, and while I did find him sitting within the entrance to the side passage on either side of the cramped entrance, at least it wasn’t hidden.

Having located him, I first asked him where we might find an alchemist, though his laughing response made me grit my teeth.

“Hahaha, there’s no alchemists in Ouhl, lad! You can try the bazaar, but alchemy’ll cost you, if you can find it before some richling buys it up. I’d tell you to try your hand at one of the sects, but they’ve been pretty strict with outsiders lately.”

I recalled what Jorl had said about the alchemists visiting to harvest the red grass, but it appeared as though they did not bother to stick around. I could understand it, if they could not actually work locally, though I did wonder why they did not at least stick around or host some kind of shop, if only to sell their products. From what the guard was saying, it seemed like they would make a killing.

Accepting the city for what it was, I asked for directions to the bazaar, being careful to keep my voice even. The guard complied with a shrug, giving me fairly straightforward instructions. Thanking him, I also asked him to let our friends know where we were going, if they came down; after coaxing reluctant agreement out of him, the three of us set out into the city.

Outside, the sky was grey and clouded and a cool breeze blew among the brutalist buildings, whistling as it caught the jagged metal features decorating their surfaces.

As the three of us walked through the busy streets, I noticed something that I had not the day before about the people around us; they moved around strangely, ensuring that they each had space between themselves and others. I saw people stop and step aside with eyes cast aside to allow others to pass where there was not enough room for them all. I wondered whether there was some kind of ranking in the city, or whether it was just politeness. The eyes I understood, as meeting people’s eyes made my bloodlust sit up and pay attention, if they did not look away, at least.

It was a hard habit to try to get into; I was not the most deferential person and a part of me resisted looking away mightily. I found the best way of avoiding the issue entirely was to keep my eyes low and avoid contact entirely.

After ten minutes or so of travel, we reached the back of a tightly packed crowd; from the directions I had been given, this was around where a square should have been and I wondered what could be going on in it to force the crowd together, when they had to that point been purposefully dispersed.

Turning to Riffa, who was at least twice the height of the majority of Ouhl’s citizens, I asked if she could see what was going on.

“With restrained judgement, there are three groups stood shouting at each other from across the square.”

That sounded both interesting, and a recipe for approaching disaster based on what I knew of the city.

“I’m going to get a better look.”

I pointed at a nearby building which seemed to border the square and Focused for a moment, lending myself speed before leaping into the air. The building I was aiming for was about a hundred feet high and the same distance away. As I shot through the air, I looked down over the crowd, and it occurred to me to wonder why people moved about at normal, human speeds, through streets? In reality, none of the people now below me were limited to such mundane methods of traveling, and it seemed a waste to ignore such a large part of their abilities, outside of battle.

I landed on the flat roof with a dull thud, taking a few steps to bleed my momentum before turning in the same direction the building faced, even as another thud sounded behind me. Turning, I saw Toria had joined me and I waited expectantly for Riffa to join us. After several seconds, I looked down to see Riffa simply watching from where she had been, and it occurred to me that without a speed boost, the distance was likely too great for the giant to cross. I winced slightly at my assumption, but managed to justify it by reminding myself that of the three of us, only the risi was tall enough to have an entirely unobstructed view from the street.

That solved, I focused on the events in question; down in the square, amidst various now un-manned stalls, stood three very different groups.

The group furthest from me were all dressed in weirdly short togas in shades of yellow and brown; at their head stood a powerfully muscled woman with green hair styled into two horns that jutted forward from her hair. A massive hammer rested on one shoulder as she waved her free hand back and forth, shouting something I could not quite make out.

Off to the side, the second group were dressed in black and red robes and they constantly shifted position, ducking between each other as if to hide their numbers. Their leader was a slender, bald man with a strange purple cloud floating around his head like a halo. He stood silent with his arms crossed, tapping his foot.

Lastly, the group closest to us was composed of what looked like humanoid rams, with cloven hooves at the end of their legs, but humanoid hands. Their heads were mostly indistinguishable from actual rams, though their curling horns seemed to be made from wood. They wore tight fitting shorts and shirts of a pale gold, and each carried a long staff. Their leader had a mantle of what looked to be brightly coloured flowers that spilled down over broad shoulders to the small of their back. The ram leader was pointing at the woman with the hammer and shouting over her, and while I could not make out the words, I could make out that their voice was strangely high-pitched for somebody of their size.

As I watched, still unable to hear more than their voices, the three became more animated, with the bald man joined in on the shouting, his hand stabbing back and forth between the other two groups. I could feel the tension rising in the square, urged on by the violence in the atmosphere, and I even noticed the crowds at the entrances begin to stir as the aggression affected even them.

I was about to suggest we get back to Riffa and leave when I caught sight of movement on the other side, and dozens of people pressed in red and white leapt into the centre of the square, their backs to each other and facing out. At the centre of the formation stood Badan Tain, the Blood Marshal. As I watched, he brought something to his mouth that looked almost like a strangely bent coin across the distance, but proved to be some kind of voice amplifier. He spoke into his hand, his voice ringing out like lower thunder, vibrating the stone on which I stood.

“DISPERSE; THIS IS AN UNLAWFUL CONFRONTATION. DISPERSE, OR BE DISPERSED! I HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF YOUR SECT BULLSHIT IN THE LAST YEAR TO LAST A LIFETIME, AND AM IN NO MOOD TO PUT UP WITH MORE!”

The crowds, which has been inching towards violence of their own were silent after Tain’s proclamation, and even began to filter away in other directions. The sects themselves could be heard grumbling away to each other in the sudden absence of sound, and while it looked like a struggle, it did seem like they were going to back down, as the three groups reluctantly eyed each other and began to turn away.

At the last moment, the bald man with the purple halo spun back and waves his hands dramatically at the group of Blood Guard, a purple mist the same colour as his own condensing out of the air and sweeping towards the Marshall with almost shocking speed.

The Guard were not caught unawares, however; as the purple cloud shot toward them, they held out their hands in unison, and where the wave impacted them, it stopped dead. There was a snap of displaced air and Tain vanished, reappearing next to the red and black clad leader, sweeping his arm down in an almost negligent manner before vanishing and re-appearing once more within the formation.

For a moment, everything was still, the purple fog dissipating as quickly as it had formed. I stood watching the leader, my brows pulled into a frown as I thought back on the Marshal’s attack; it had been too fast to track accurately without my abilities maxed out, but I had the impression that he had only attacked with his little finger, barely even touching his target.

Wondering whether the peace breaker would attack once more, I realised that he had not moved at all, and then with a crash the building on the other side partially collapsed, its outward face severed in a neat line, As the cut stones crashed to the ground, dust rolled out, blowing to and around the still sect leader and all at once he simply fell into two clean halves, front and back.

“IF YOU SHIT STAINS DO NOT WISH TO FOLLOW IN THAT IDIOT’S FOOTSTEPS, LEAVE NOW! IF YOU ARE STILL HERE BY THE TIME I COUNT TO THREE, I’M GOING TO BE VERY FUCKING ANGRY! ONE!”

There was hesitation, as the sect members looked at the fallen man, but in the end, it seemed like they did not want to tangle with the guard, having just seen what was presumably one of their most powerful members cut down in an instant. A couple of the red-and-black robed people rushed forward to gather up the body before the entire mass of them ran off, very quickly. The other sects also left, though the brown and yellow clad faction disdained the street in favour of massive, bounding jumps.

“That is a dangerous ability.”

I could only nod at Toria’s words; much like V, it seemed even a touch from Tain could be enough to kill. The breadth of powers available to cultivators truly was staggering.

“Let’s get back to Riffa, and then out of here. I don’t want to be accused of not dispersing...”

The two of us jumped down to the street once more, where Riffa gave as a grave nod and we took off to find a way around the square. Unfortunately, we did not get far before a voice called out from behind us, stopping us in our tracks.

“And of course you’re here, you Void-fucked territorial shit. You aren’t a member of one of these bastard sects, are you?”

Turning, I looked back at the Blood Marshal, making sure to keep my eyes down; the last thing I wanted at that moment was to become the way I had been outside the gates.

“No, nothing to do with them. We were on our way to the bazaar to look for something to help us sleep. This just happened to be on the way.

There was a pause for a moment, before Tain spoke again.

“That checks out, if coming from the City’s Edge. You can go, but if you see that Void-f... if you see the Apex of the Crystal Drake, can you ask him to stop fucking scaring the shit out of my city? I have enough to deal with.”

“Uh, I’ll certainly pass on the message...”

“Good. Now fuck off.”

The three of us left without another word; the man was obviously somewhere in the Pinnacle stage and despite our pressed tempers, there was nothing to be gained from a confrontation except maybe death. I did wonder how he knew where we were staying, however, and whether he – they – tracked all new arrivals, or whether we were a special case. Being a special case for such a foul-tempered, violent asshole was not something I had any interest in being, but knowing my luck, I was going to keep running into the damned ren bastard...