“How much longer must we wait?” An asked irritably.

Jack shifted in his seat to look at An, who was leaned up against one of the back walls of the basement cell they were in. The same one they’d stored Pen and her cronies in back when the Silver Paw had still been a going concern.

Before he’d leveled the compound of said organization with enough explosives to make a mountain blush.

Since then he’d not had much use for the room and its many very expensive ki-constricting restraints.

With Baidar healed, that had changed – because he doubted he’d be able to put her down as easily a second time as he had the first.

He doubted she’d oblige him by standing still long enough to take a chain-shot-bola to the chest a second time.

To that end, he once more visually confirmed the presence of the ki-constricting anklet around the unconscious ox-woman’s ankle. An had argued for the full suite of constraints, but Jack was rather hoping to start off this little interrogation on a more positive note.

Or at least, present himself as a more benevolent party than her former hosts.

“It’s barely been a minute since we removed the needle.” Jack responded easily as he lowered the data-pad he’d been working on. “Sheng said it would take about ten.”

An just growled before returning to stalking back and forth behind him.

Watching her, Jack cocked a single eyebrow. While he’d known her to be a rather passionate woman, he’d rarely seen his ‘student’ express her anger so openly. Or at least, not in his presence.

It said a lot about how opposed she was to his latest acquisition. She needn’t be. He had no intention of keeping the cannibal woman around any longer than he strictly needed to. For now though, she had information he wanted. And given that the ‘interrogators’ below the Imperial Palace had achieved less than nothing in the time they’d had the were-ox, Jack figured it was time for him to try a different approach.

And once we’re done with her, we can drag her out back and have her shot behind the chemical shed for all I care, he thought dismissively.

A little callous, but he wasn’t about to show too much sympathy to a cannibal who’d been part of an army that planned to wipe the entire populace of Ten Huo off the map by devouring them alive.

At least I didn’t need to explain the concept of ‘good cop, bad cop’ to An, he thought as he watched her ears twitch about irritably.

Still, he couldn’t deny some pang of instinctive sympathy as he looked at her unconscious body – clad in little more than a set of threadbare rags that covered no more than the essentials.

Though I imagine nudity is less of a taboo for an instinctive cultivator given she has fur to compensate, he thought.

Certainly the mortal tribesmen he’d seen outside of the walls of Ten Huo had worn animals pelts for protection from the elements, but the cultivators’ choice in clothing had been significantly more sparse.

Not entirely absent, but sparse.

Said lack of clothing on the part of his prisoner was part of why he now couldn’t help but feel some small amount of sympathy for her. Because while many of her more recent wounds had been healed scarlessly by Sheng, Jack could see dozens more peeking out from under her rags.

Some big. Some small. All of different ages. And some looked very old. In short, Baidar had the kind of body you gained from a lifetime of hardship – provided it didn’t break you.

Jack knew because he’d not looked too different before he’d received his company mandated gene-mods…

He shook his head, deliberately dismissing the small spark of kinship that tried to form within him.

“Do you think she’ll be cognizant,” he asked.

After a month without results, torturers had decided to step things up. If she died before she broke, so be it.

“Instinctive or not, no true cultivator would be addled by a little tribulation,” An scoffed.

Jack almost wanted to say that was just ego talking. Torture was torture. He didn’t though, because An had a point.

It was easy to dismiss cultivators as arrogant prats drunk on power - which they were - because it was easy to forget that said arrogance was earned in blood sweat and tears.

He’d seen An and Ren practice. Despite all the work he’d piled onto them, they never skipped a day. Because they couldn’t afford not to. Every moment mattered when it came to cultivation, and every inch of progress was measured in pain. From ingesting reagents, sweating out impurities, balancing cosmic forces in your guts, to trying to understand yourself, to performing katas, to sparring, to surviving the viper’s pit that was sect politics.

It was dizzying to behold and Jack held a lot of respect for even the least talented cultivator – and at least somewhat understood why they so disdained mortals as being ‘lazy’.

He didn’t agree with it, but he understood why so many of the super powered beings thought as they did.

And while he might have considered the whole ‘survival of the fittest’ mentality that came of it needlessly wasteful… he didn’t for one second underestimate the people that were a product of it.

They were dangerous.

And the only reason I keep catching them off guard is because I’m a totally outside context problem, he thought with cynical amusement.

So no, with that in mind, he found himself in agreement with the idea that Baidar hadn’t been broken by her time in the dungeons. She’d certainly not provided her jailors with any real actionable intel despite the interrogators best efforts.

Which was just… odd. Torture was usually disdained not because it didn’t provide results, but because it invariably provided results. People would say whatever they thought an interrogator wanted to hear if it meant the pain stopped.

Which is why you usually have to independently interrogate at least two people with the information you want to make sure their info corroborates, he thought grimly as he recalled an earlier time in his life.

He was just about to go back to finishing up the design for Shui’s new mountain fortress when the figure in front of him stirred, causing the ki-dampening manacle around her ankle to clink as she moved.

Then her eyes flicked open and she suddenly sat up, hands moving to massage her wrists where another set of manacles had previously been. It was actually kind of alarming how smooth the motion was. There was no hint of hesitation or grogginess in her actions.

Fucking cultivators, Jack thought as he felt his microbots stir beneath his clothes – them and An the only reason he felt comfortable enough to have this meeting unarmored.

Finally, after confirming the presence of the single remaining anklet, and a quick glance around the room, the Instinctive cultivator’s gaze settled on his unarmored form.

“I’m alive?”

He nodded slowly. “You are.”

“I hadn’t thought to be. When your people came to drag me away, I had thought it to my execution.” Despite the contents of her words, she sounded surprisingly unphased by the possibility.

“That can still be arranged,” An grunted.

Jack shook his head. “But that needn’t be the only outcome of this meeting.”

Baidar’s gaze settled on him.

“You are a male. The same male that defeated me.” For a moment there was a hint of interest in her gaze as she regarded him, before she seemed to mentally shake it away. “Are my clan still alive? The city still stands, so I fear the worst.”

Jack rolled the question around inside his mind before he decided on answering.

“Dead to the last,” he said finally.

The lack of ox-kin bodies discovered when An chased down the horde had been noted. As had the race of the massive mound of bodies found not too far from where the Herald had conducted her sacrifices. Whether it had been one clan or multiple in the pile, Jack couldn’t truly say. He could definitely assume that Baidar’s people had been amongst them though, if only through a process of elimination.

Clans, just like sects, seemed to be pretty mono-racial.

Watching her, he noticed the way the woman’s bovine ears twitched, even if her facial features remained as placid as ever.

A long moment passed in silence before she spoke again.

“By you?” Audibly, her tone was no less placid than they’d been before, but there was no missing the weight of her gaze.

There was anger there, less than he might have expected, but present all the same. Though to be fair, that was pretty par for the course as far as this conversation was going. He’d been expecting the Instinctive cultivator to at least have some harsh words for him upon waking, given that he’d been the one who’d handed her off to Huang, who in turn had consigned the tribal warriors to the palace dungeons – and its accompanying cadre of torturers.

Honestly, this whole conversation wasn’t going as he expected, given he’d been expecting to deal with a unhinged cannibal – rather than the rather deliberate and quiet woman she was. In that regard it was rather fortunate that her inhuman visage served as a decent reminder of why she was where she was and why he didn’t need to pity her as he stated his next words.

“No actually,” he said slowly. “Your former leader.”

The anger dulled, to be quickly replaced by pain. “…She used them as fuel for her city killer technique.”

She nodded.

Her massive hands shifted into fists. “I feared as much.”

Then she went silent, and though Jack waited for her to say something else, the woman might as well have been carved from stone for all that she moved or spoke in the minutes afterwards.

“Do you want to live?” he finally asked.

The ox-woman cocked her head curiously, her massive horns shifting somewhat alarmingly as she did. Jack very deliberately did not glance down at the rather copious amount of sideboob being put on display by her arms crossing under her literally inhuman bovine chest.

“Survive?” he prompted. “Get out of here? Unless you have some of your people behind the wall – which I doubt considering the… civilian heavy nature of the horde you arrived with – you’re the last of your clan. Wouldn’t want your clan’s techniques, history and culture to die with you?”

He’d like to think he’d gotten some basic grasp of cultivator thinking by now.

Baidar eyed him consideringly. “You lie. Imperials know nothing but deceit. You would never release me.”

That was true.

He raised his hands. “I can’t argue that. I also can’t trust any information you provide, nor give you the means to escape until you’ve provided, which means I can’t let you go until you tell me what I want to know.”

He leaned back in his chair. “So how about we compromise? Are you hungry?”

“Yes.”

“I can bring you food. Decent food. Even… meat.” Lord knew he had enough bodies lying around – even if he felt a little ill for offering them. “Things I can provide here and now as proof of my goodwill.”

Baidar scowled. “Trade is the way of the Reasoned. I will not partake.”

Jack resisted the urge to tsk.

“Or we could kill you if you don’t do what my master asks,” An pointed out.

Rather than scoff at the threat like he might have expected, Baidar actually sat up. “In that case, I am listening.”

The human frowned. “Really? Months of torture and you say nothing, but a single threat and you fold?”

“I do not know what the arrangement of clothes has to do with anything, but I am the last of my kin. Before I was willing to suffer if it meant the herd survived. Now there is no herd. I alone must survive to pass on my genes and experience to the next generation. Before that need, all else is meaningless.” She eyed him. “I must survive.”

Jack eyed her in turn. She really wasn’t as he’d imagined an Instinctive cultivator to be. He’d expected some kind of unhinged psychopath hungering for human flesh. She wasn’t though. Or at least, she didn’t seem to be. She was calm. Reasoned. Almost… docile. Sure, her behavior and reasoning were odd, but no more so than could be explained from coming from an entirely different culture.

Well, she is an ox, he thought with a snicker… before a realization seemed to hit him.

…She thinks she’s an ox.

Instinctives were supposed to embody the traits of the animal they represented. And cows weren’t predators.

They were herbivores.

“Do you eat meat?” he asked suddenly.

The ox-woman actually looked offended. “I do not see the logic of this question, but no, obviously not.”

“Never?”

“No.” Again, she looked offended – though this time it was at the idea of him doubting her word.

And she did say that deceit was the domain of the Reasoned, he realized. Does that mean they don’t lie?

He shook his head. That would be something worth following up on later. For the moment his focus was on the fact that the woman across from him – and others like her – weren’t what he thought they were.

Though they weren’t what they thought they were either. Her line about not eating any meat ever was so… basic. Nature was rarely so binary as ‘herbivore’ or ‘carnivore’. Jack had seen enough nature documentaries and viral videos to know herbivores wouldn’t turn down a bit of free protein if the opportunity presented.

Just as carnivores sometimes ate grass to aid digestion.

Nature was adaptable.

Though if she hadn’t joined the horde as some part of predatory attempt to feast on a bunch of Imperials… why had her people come south with a bunch of their natural enemies, into danger, in direct contrast to how a bunch of oxen should theoretically behave.

“Why did you accompany the Horde south? You don’t use money. You don’t use houses. There’s enough room beyond the walls of the Empire that I doubt you needed the territory. Especially with a bunch of Instinctives vacating it for this invasion… so why? What benefit was there for the ox-kin? For any herbivore Instinctive?”

The ox seemed to consider him.

“You do not speak or act as the others did, male. Do you not care to know more of the Horde and her numbers? The techniques we use? Insight into the leader’s plans?”

Jack shrugged. Those things were important, yes, but hardly super important. They didn’t affect his plans, which were to hunker down and let both the Empire and the Horde exhaust themselves.

“Answer the question please.”

“We chose because we would die otherwise.” Baidar’s words were simple. “We were told to come or we would be hunted to the last. Our essence used to fuel those who would. The Heralds made examples of those that refused.”

“Your ‘essence’ being?” Jack asked with a sinking feeling.

“Our earthly form.”

Well… that was interesting. And horrifying for a number of reasons. Not least of which being that he’d likely bombed a lot of people that really hadn’t wanted to be anywhere near him.

He wasn’t about to lose sleep over it though. He hadn’t wanted them anywhere near him either.

“And if the threat of the Heralds were to disappear?” he asked. “What would happen to the many disparate clans of the Horde?”

The ox just shrugged. “They would splinter, each pursuing their most natural instinct. The Heralds alone maintain the peace so long as it suits them, using all others as tools – catering to their own instincts. I cannot speak for all Instinctives, but my instincts would demand I flee the Empire. It is a dense hunting ground flush with enemies.”

Jack smiled.

-----------------------

No means were beneath the Inquisition. Even ones as… unpalatable as this.

“Thank the Empress,” her male companion muttered for the umpteenth time as they edged ever closer to the wall of ‘Fortress Five’ and the safety they represented.

She resisted the urge to send him a scornful glance. The man was supposed to be pretending to be her uncle and as such she needed to play the part of the demure mortal girl.

That did not mean his constant mutterings were not an irritation – as he continually thanked her mother for the work of rebels.

Unfortunately, she needed the scruffy looking cretin. A woman traveling alone would have been completely unbelievable given the current chaos in the Empire. Two familial survivors were less so.

Theoretically, she might have been better served traveling as the man’s wife… but even she had limits.

Perhaps because of that weakness of hers, she’d caught a number of admiring glances from the crowds around them as they waited in line to enter through the fortress town’s gates. As a cultivator she was more attractive than most – despite her attempts to conceal that fact with makeup, dirt and a deep hood – and as a single woman she was something to be coveted.

Perhaps this effect might have been diminished if she had been allowed to travel with a group of other ‘relatives’ in the form of her fellow inquisitors, but too many unearthly beauties together would have stuck out like a sore thumb.

No, they would be entering as ‘pairs’. One mortal. One inquisitor.

“Thank the Empress,” the idiot muttered again as they shuffled forward.

For her part, Shi stared up at the impossible walls of the fortress.

Walls that should not have been there.

Then again, neither should we, she considered.

Hers was a trip that was set to take months. And it might have, if she had a mortal army to deal with.

So she’d done without it. The mortal army of Hai Guang would march without their cultivator complement. Some would be lost to spirit beasts, certainly, but that was a price Shi was willing to pay if it meant she could resolve the Ten Huo issue faster.

To that end, she had fifty cultivators with her. Twenty of her inquisitors and thirty former rebels who were ‘desperate’ to atone for their misdeeds.

Her force could neither take ground nor lay a proper siege, but it would serve as a potent strike force if needed. As she had demonstrated in Hai Guang.

By conventional reckoning, fifty cultivators would easily be a match for a thousand times their own number in mortals. And for this mission that would hopefully be all she would need. If not, then the mortal army of Hai Guang would arrive in due time.

She had been happy about the haste with which they had managed to move.

With an emphasis on had.

Her gaze wandered over the fortress walls.

They looked new, lacking the pits and divots that came with age and exposure to the elements. She was sure of it. She had plenty of time to observe them in the hour she had spent in this line thus far. All to enter a fortress that shouldn’t exist.

Couldn’t exist.

Nor could the dozen others her scouts had reported.

They couldn’t just be bypassed. She and her people could do it easily enough, but that would leave them cut off in enemy territory should ‘negotiations’ sour with the Outsider Divinity. Likewise the incoming army of Hai Guang would be unable to siege them on arrival without cultivator support.

Perhaps these tradeoffs might yet be worth it in return for haste. My force may be sufficient to impress upon this outsider the danger of challenging the Dragon, she thought. Perhaps not.

In order to make that decision she would need information.

To that end, her people had snagged a number of refugees from out of sight of the walls and used them to join the line hoping to gain admission to the fortress.

Something that had caused her no small amount of irritation when she discovered they were not Northerners fleeing the conflict but Central residents seeking opportunities.

Faithless cowards, she thought as she listened to her companion mutter in an unmistakably central accent.

“Next!”

She admittedly could have left the task to her subordinates, but she was never one to sit back and do nothing. More to the point, she didn’t have the manpower. There were a dozen of these fortresses and she wanted every one investigated.

And with some of her inquisitors required to hang back and keep an eye on the former rebels, she couldn’t hang back and wait for the reports of others even if she wanted to.

How were these fortresses built though? She pondered again as she and her companion stepped forward.

The mortal gate guard glanced dismissively at her as they strode up to him, before doing a mental double take and staring as his ilk were so prone to doing. He wouldn’t have dared if he knew what she was, but here and now she seemed to be little more than an absurdly beautiful mortal.

For her part, she regarded him with a practiced demure smile, even as her gaze roamed over his uniform. It was well made. Expensive. The sort one would normally see on palace guard, not gate guards. More to the point, it was of a strange design. Not Imperial.

The weapon is odd too, she noted. A spear?

It was slung over his shoulder and had an odd shape - and what appeared to be a trigger.

Some kind of crossbow instead? If that’s the case, where’s the bow?

Either way, it was as foreign as the man’s uniform. Which could only mean it was a product of the outsider.

Which meant the fortress was too. Though the kind of divinity that would lower itself to building a domicile to be crewed by mortals could hardly be called worthy of the title.

Still, she would steal one of these weapons in order to gain some insight into her foe’s origins and methods. For even the most innocuous of tools could provide surprising insight.

“N-names?” The man – more of a boy – stuttered as he grasped a peculiar grey tablet.

“Hao Hui,” the fool said quickly.

She smiled. “Shui Hui.”

The man tapped something on the tablet as they both stared at him.

Did he have a bit of chalk in his hand? Shui couldn’t hear the telltale scratching of chalk or the squishing of ink, only the rhythmic thudding of flesh hitting something hard.

Was the idiot pretending to be literate in an attempt to impress her?

“That accent and those clothes, you guys are from central right?” he asked after a minute.

“Aye.”

The boy tsked. “Honestly, you’d think there’d be safe, if nowhere, so close to the throne. Yet we’ve had a few like you through. Seems things are going to shit everywhere.”

Shui held her tongue, not just as a result of the traitor’s words, but the way the idiot nervously glanced at her. Fortunately, the guard didn’t notice it or put the other man’s nervousness down to a sharp tongued niece.

“Well, you’re safe here.” The man finally lowered the fake tablet. “Built by Lady An herself using the tools of a Hidden Master.”

A hidden master? Was that how this outlander had beguiled away these subjects of the Empire? She squished her first inclination to ask more. It was better to be quiet for now lest she draw suspicion. She’d have more opportunities once she was inside.

“I’d be happy to show you around.” The boy said, looking at her before stuttering as he turned his gaze back to her ‘uncle’. “B-both of you. I mean, I know how hard it can be in a new place. Wasn’t all that long ago I was standing where you are now. And look at me now.”

The man spoke proudly as he showed off his gleaming breastplate.

“We might take you up on that offer,” the fool said after she nudged him. “For now though we’re really looking forward to finding an inn and sleeping in an actual bed.” He glanced at the crowd behind them. “Provided there’s any available.”

He shook his head. “Naw, you don’t need to worry about that. These fortress city’s have plenty of temporary housing set aside for newcomers. Though you can only stay there a week before the militia – sorry, army - tosses you out so be sure to make use of it. Use the time to find paying work and renting a proper apart ment block, or continuing on down to Jiangshi proper.”

The man clearly wanted to ask what an apart ment block was, but held his tongue.

The boy turned as a side door opened and a figure came out. It was one of the other guards that had disappeared the moment Shui and the fool walked up.

“Ah, now we just need to present you your passes,” the boy said as he smiled at his fellow guard.

A fellow guard who was not smiling. He was trying to appear calm – and might even have pulled it off if she weren’t a cultivator. As it was his nervousness was obvious. His gait was tense. His heart was pumping slightly too fast. There was a slight dilation in the eye. A tenseness in his gait. Finally, she could smell the telltale tang of fresh sweat overlaying the old.

Did he know what she was? An Imperial? An inquisitor? Or a cultivator? Of the three, that last was not a problem. In fact, it was the most logical explanation. He thought she was a deserter fleeing the war by pretending to be a mortal.

It happened more often than most realized – though many could not keep up the illusion for long.

“Here are your visitor passes,” the newcomer muttered as he passed two small bracelets over.

Shui glanced down at them curiously, and indeed, inscribed in small font was the name she’d given.

How curious? She thought. Do they have a small scribe in the back room?

Perhaps she might have been more suspicious of the innocuous bits of identification, but similar things were used in other cities. More to the point, each visitor before her had received the same.

Still, she had no intention of keeping it on her person for even a moment longer than necessary, lest it be some sort of trap.

…Though that seemed vanishingly unlikely given that she felt not a hint of ki from it.

“Thank you,” she smiled, making the newcomer stiffen.

Ignorant of his colleague’s discomfort, the first guard blathered on. “Remember, you’ll need to present this at each checkpoint you pass so don’t lose it. If you do you’ll need to come back here – and I promise you that they ain’t cheap to replace.”

“I’ll be sure to keep it safe.” She beamed, causing the guard to blush. “And I’ll make sure my uncle does too. He’s the forgetful sort.”

“T-that’s me,” the fool grunted.

“Then welcome to fortress city five.”

“Thanks!”

Shui continued to smile as she walked through the gait, though her every step was carefully positioned to allow her to dodge if this was some sort of trap. Though as she walked further and further into the surprisingly well-kept paved street beyond, she heard no signs of alarm. No one came running. No cultivators made themselves known.

Hmm, it seems my theory was right. The man thought I was a deserter, she decided. How fortunate for him.

If he’d made trouble, she would have been inconvenienced, but he would have been the first to die.

She would have made sure of it.

…That was irrelevant now though.

Instead she found herself taking in the sights of this strange new fortress town – and searching for what weakness she could find.

Though she did find herself staring at some bizarre art piece stood to the side of the gatehouse. Fashioned in the shape of some giant six-legged crab, it had a single massive trunk that gleamed in the morning light.

“Odd statue,” her companion mumbled, following her gaze.

An odd statue indeed. Not least of all because some guards were actually sitting on it, ruining whatever mystique the artist had likely tried to create with the admittedly… odd construct.

Soon enough though she dismissed it and carried on her way.

If her foe was willing to waste time and metal on such frivolous things – which was admittedly just like a divinity – then that would make their defeat and subjugation by the Celestial Empire all that more assured.

“For the Empress,” Shi murmured under her breath.