The village lay empty and silent around us, all life leeched from it as if a painter had just swabbed all the color away with a sponge. Or that was how it seemed, at least. If I focused, I could still sense hints of life, scattered and small, yet remarkably bright for all their casual unobtrusiveness.

I let my horse pick its way forward. She was a spirit beast, much tougher and stronger than a mundane horse, even if she looked like a normal gray, and she didn’t need my help to get around. Absentmindedly, I patted her neck, earning a flick of her ears and a soft snort. I knew they’d actually given her the name White Wind Thundering, but I’d decided I’d just call her White, which wasn’t any worse than that. She’d been a prize captured three cities ago from the stables of the local mayor, who’d fled south in a panic. He might even have passed through this place.

“Scorched earth tactics,” I mused. “Pretty literal. You definitely get a different understanding of them seeing them in action instead of just reading about it.”

“I could have done without seeing this concept in action,” Lei murmured.

“Look on the bright side,” Yarani said. “If we see enough of it, you’ll get used to it quickly and it won’t bother you as much.”

“Oh, thank you very much for that reassurance.”

“I agree we should all strive to prevent that course of events,” I spoke up again before they could really get started. “Unfortunately, that’s easier said than done. Yarani, do you notice anything out of place, anything we could use?”

My girlfriend swept her gaze around us, grimacing. “Not really, Nari. This is pretty textbook style. If anyone was deranged enough to write a textbook about how to do this.”

We continued forward. Some of the guards flew overhead, but most of the people in this group moved on the ground. It was safer that way, since there might still be the equivalent of a sniper hidden farther away, and the qi used here had made the whole location less than stable. The random drafts of cold and hot air against my skin showed that. It would probably settle down soon, but I wanted to get a good look, anyway, and we’d been traveling on the ground for a while.

“They can’t do this in too large an area, can they?” Kajare asked. “Slaughtering their own people, or at least their sources of supply, isn’t going to help them against us. I can see them denying us some support and making a sort of firebreak, but up until the next city at minimum, they’ll have to stop the devastation.”

“Probably,” I replied.

I didn’t know if the Zarian had evacuated everyone from this area, and frankly doubted it. Although I knew they would be smart enough to avoid unnecessary mass casualties. It probably didn’t much matter for us, at the moment.

The army could still advance, but we’d have to be careful. While we weren’t very reliant on getting food and other supplies, they’d still denied us resources we’d planned on. Especially given that, with so many Lighters, we were more vulnerable to this sort of thing than normal cultivator armies, and getting water might be a problem. Hardly an unsolvable one, though. But they’d also denied us many of the terrain advantages we could have had, and the potential for fortifications offered by settlements.

This village was pretty big, compared to others we’d passed. There was almost nothing left of it at all, and yet I still fancied I saw some signs of an orderly evacuation. There were too few animal bones, not just in the settlement itself, but the surrounding regions, and I found little metal, melted or otherwise, lying around. Of course, that didn’t mean much. I would have been hard-pressed to estimate the level of prosperity and material belongings of a typical Imperial village, much less a Zarian one.

We continued in silence, slowly making our way forward. The majority of the army was about a hundred kilometers away, but we’d headed out to take a look at the scorched earth ourselves. We could move much faster than the army and roam around, covering more ground, while staying reasonably close to safety. The normal Imperial guard detachment had been augmented with further guards and a squad of elites, so we should be safe enough, and I’d taken Elia and Elis in case they could offer some insight into what had happened. Mostly, I just wanted to get a better sense for it myself. It wasn’t every day you got a use of qi like this, on such a wide geographical scale, and I’d already noted several interesting similarities to qi anomalies.

A gust of wind swept across us, quickly joined by others as the wind changed direction and increased in intensity. It swept dust and flakes of ash over us. I swiped my sleeve over my face to clear it and blinked against the particles as I looked around. I could just make out the dark band of a brook in the distance to the left, although it was probably not much more than a dry riverbed by now. We should head there and follow it to the next village, and then we could turn around in a wide arc and rejoin the main army, which would have moved far enough forward by then that they’d be close and would be easy to find in this area, anyway.

“Hey.” I raised my voice slightly to be sure everyone heard me. “I think we’ve seen a lot and there’s not much more to do, so we can think about heading back now. We should pick up the pace a little and go … right.”

I paused. I had the distinct feeling that there was something important ahead to the right. A nudge from Rijoko, obviously. He didn’t send me any verbal messages, just a feeling, but I also got the sense that this could be dangerous.

“Are you sure?” Yarani asked. “The army’s towards our left. We could head towards that stream.”

“I’m sure,” I replied, nudging my horse to speed up a little. “My lunar senses are tingling.” I winced. “Ugh, no, that was a bad one. Anyway, there’s something there. We should be careful.”

Yarani audibly sighed, and from the corner of my eye, I saw her exchanging a look with Kajare, but everyone got their own horses or flying swords to speed up, and we moved off without further words being exchanged. Aston sent a few of the guards to spread out a little farther, widening the perimeter, and he murmured something into his communication talisman. I didn’t pay much attention to it, and he’d apparently activated the noise-muffling enchantment, anyway.

We traveled onward for maybe ten minutes. I grew steadily more tense as the time and the meters passed. Despite not having any real landmark or target to aim for, we moved in a straight line, as I guided us in the right direction. My feeling intensified a little, but it didn’t really change, not that I would have expected Rijoko to use precise directions when a vague intuition would do. And, of course, it really did work well, as a rule.

Slowly, another structure appeared out of the smog on the horizon. I only realized it had to be a natural feature of the terrain after a moment, because its straight-lined edges and composition looked like they should have come from human hands. But it was actually something closer to a rocky hill, shaped in what I came to realize must have been a bowl-shaped way. That made it hard to say what might have been over the ridge.

I glanced around, but the flying members or our party were apparently too low down to see any better. For a moment, I considered sending one of the guards up to scout, but dismissed the possibility. Anything they could see would also be able to see - or sense - them. And I felt the definite urge to be careful.

I took a deep breath, focusing on my qi senses again. There was something odd, now. Definitely somewhere up ahead on that ridge. Maybe it actually was a settlement, or had been used as such. Or maybe a shrine? In any case, I was beginning to to pick up hints of spiritual qi, and they felt vaguely familiar.

I held up a hand and we slowed to a stop. I could see the tension in the faces of my companions, probably reflecting the impression they got from me.

“I’m pretty sure there’s something up there. Or perhaps someone,” I said. “I think I’d rather be prepared before rushing in, this time.” That got a few smiles, at least. “I’d like some us to split up and circle wide around this feature, then approach from another direction. I guess we should probably curve our path a little, too. And we should observe radio silence unless it’s critical, and even then, please use electromagnetic waves instead of qi.”

“Understood, my lady,” Aston replied seriously. “With your permission, I would detach half of the elite squad along with our standard second team from your guard detail.”

I nodded. “Lei, if it’s alright with you, can I ask you to go with that group, as well? Having a light and darkness cultivator could be helpful, and I’d like you to be as stealthy as possible.”

“Of course, Nari.” Lei smiled with a hint of playfulness in his eyes. Then he turned to Elis. “Would you come along as well? It probably makes sense to split our truth-seers.”

Elis nodded calmly. “Sure.”

We waited for a few minutes while Aston sorted things out with the soldiers. They swapped a few people around to maximize each group’s set of abilities and quickly established a joint chain of command. Everyone dismounted, and the weakest guard took charge of the horses. We’d continue on foot from here. Then the group moved off. I waited for a moment, looking at Lei and Elis as they walked away, before I turned back to my own party and continued on.

We moved more slowly now, to give the others time, but I didn’t mind that. I started to lay a technique over our group, though I kept it subtle. Besides the strain on my qi reserves, the problem with these shrouding techniques was that, against some opposition, they might hide our auras only to draw more attention to the light (or darkness) qi used for it. But I’d been taught by the best, and I had some practice in bending the light around people in a surreptitious way.

Our slow speed made the trip seem endless, even though I knew it couldn’t have been that long. The sun barely moved, but it had already been nearing the horizon, and the sky was starting to take on a reddish tint. We didn’t talk, and we didn’t get any communications from the others. That might have been a mistake, but I really didn’t want to do anything that tipped a possible quarry off.

Aston made a hand gesture, and they drew in tighter around me. After a few more minutes of silent travel, still faster than any normal human could have moved, we started to move up the slope of the hilly incline, walking slowly. We were getting somewhere. And the other group had to be in a good position, too.

Just as I was thinking that, I realized that we had moved considerably closer by now and that what I could sense with my spiritual senses was shifting. Or becoming clearer, rather. Is that … Isuro? I frowned, trying to chase the hints I got. The sensation definitely came from further up ahead, although I probably wouldn’t actually find Isuro there. But maybe he had been here. Maybe he was even keeping an eye on the region. But there was something else, as well. I didn’t know why I hadn’t gotten it first, since it was actually stronger.

Aston, who was taking point, abruptly stopped, then slid downward to my side. He touched my wrist in what I’d learned was a trick to use qi without it typically being detectable from the outside. ‘It’s the Auditor’s son, my lady,’ he sent. ‘And he may have spotted us, or perhaps Force Two.’

I gritted my teeth. ‘Understood. Let’s hurry up.’

Aston made a hand gesture, and we surged up the hillside, abandoning all attempts at stealth.

I took a moment to absorb what we found. This seemed like it really might have been a shrine, before. While it appeared suspiciously free of devastation from the Zarian’s actions, there were still indirect effects. The center held an open pavilion of stone pillars, the edges of which were connected with stone sculpted to look like artistic lightning bolts, and the clear area in front of it had been free of plant growth or anything else before scattered debris messed it up. I could tell in an instant that it was where my target had been sitting. He’d bolted upright, and now, he was almost halfway to the other edge of the bowl-shaped depression.

Before any of my soldiers reached him, he slid to a halt. A moment later, I saw the first of Lei’s group crest the ridge.

For an instant, it seemed like everyone had frozen. Then the spirit-child reacted, moving to the side in a big leap. Before he reached the edge, though, Lei appeared close to it, a bolt of lightning dancing from his fingers and into the man. When its flash faded, the Auditor’s son had jerked backwards. He tried to take a step, but half-fell to the floor instead. Lei was there right away, though not before two of the elites beat him to it. One of them spasmed, then seemed to collect himself.

I walked forward, instinctively keeping some distance between us. The soldiers seemed just as wary of the fallen enemy, but Lei didn’t share their qualms and kicked him over onto his back.

“Target apprehended, Nari,” Lei reported with a grin, looking up at me.

I nodded, my eyes still fixed on the other spirit-child, as the rest of our parties drew nearer and closed in around the location. My qi senses were still hard at work, trying to pick up any hint that could help me understand this.

I felt what had to be the Auditor, and obviously the spirit-child. He seemed to have decided he was beaten and that not provoking us was the better part of not getting his head lopped off, although he was still twitching faintly. Blood spurted from his nose, but that had to be from a different cause. There was still the slight hint of Isuro, and by now, definitely the Moon. As if I needed confirmation my father was paying attention to what was happening here.

Well, great, I thought in that timeless instant, looking down at another, vanquished spirit-child. Now what do I do about it?