SFS - Chapter 28 (Patreon)

The next morning, I was surprised to find Crane still alive and kicking when I went to check on him. He snoozed softly against the wall of the alley with his sword hugged tightly in between his arms. The Portable Defense Flame still flickered faintly with a soft blue fire, and half-illuminated his face. Even with it, though, it seemed like he hadn’t had an easy night. There were several corpses scattered around.

“Ahem.” I coughed lightly up above him.

Crane snapped awake, and his sword flicked out a moment later. His eyes swept either side of the alley before finally setting on me. “Oh, it’s just you.”

”Wow…” I watched the man speechlessly. I deigned to grant him the blessing of my presence this morning, and he reacted like that? Some people really just weren’t worthy.

Crane stretched out and picked up the Portable Defense Flame. A wave of his hand put the flame out, and he agilely climbed up onto the roof beside me. “Shall we go?”

”Yeah, yeah. I’ll wait here.” I didn’t want to look the poor scholar in the face knowing that I was giving his ‘best friend’ a chance to escape. 

“I shouldn’t be long.” Crane nodded, and split off from me to head back to the scholar’s temporary workshop. 

I watched him go for a moment, and then found a secluded section of the tiled roof to stretch out and sit down on. My inspection turned internal, and I focused on my qi flow. I carefully manipulated it, and did some warm ups controlling the stuff and narrowing my focus.

Thorny flowed out with a thought, and opened up to the page with the Purity Art on it. I focused on the pattern etched into the silver pages, and slowly started to manipulate my qi to match. 

The core of it wasn’t all that complicated, but a few issues arose almost instantly. The Purity Art was designed for a human, not a fox. The meridians and qi flows didn’t quite match my body, which made copying the thing exactly as was almost impossible. 

My tail twitched in irritation, and I gave up… for just a moment. A noble being like myself would never admit defeat to a simple problem like this one. I just… I needed to think it through more, yip. Redesigning an entire technique to work for a fox instead of a human wasn’t easy!

I looked through the pattern once more. Copying it wouldn’t work, which meant I had to actually understand how it worked to adjust it to fit me. I traced the pattern again and again with my paw, and slowly worked through the flow of qi, what the pattern actually meant, and how it operated. 

By the time Crane came back, I totally figured it out. Erm, I figured out that I didn’t understand a single thing. Why was this so hard? A shiver went down my spine at the thought of all the work ahead of me. If even something simple is this confusing, then what about Wraithwalk? If Thorny didn’t take care of it for me, then I don’t think I’d ever understand how that one worked.

Crane dropped down next to me. “Are you ready to go?”

”Yip.” I eyed the tall human, and watched his Purity Art take care of the falling rain before it could soak into him. “Carry me?”

”Really?” He looked incredibly surprised by my request. “I thought you hated that kind of thing.”

”My paws hurt.” I whined softly, and flopped onto my side. In actuality, I wanted to give my full undivided attention to studying his qi flow. I couldn’t exactly do that while walking around, could I?

”Fine, fine.” Crane stretched down and arm to me. I jumped up, and agilely scrambled up the outstretched limb up onto his shoulders. I made myself right at home there.

Crane hopped over to the next roof over and started the long route back toward the Forlorn Temple. “Do you want to go with me?”

”To Steadfast?” My ears arched up.

”Yeah. I’ve got a few errands to run before heading back.” He glanced at me, and then looked away. “Including getting you some jerky.”

”Jerky.” My voice took on a dreamy, whishywashy tone. Oh how I wanted to devour more—

Crane bopped my nose. “You’re drooling on my shoulder.”

“No I’m not.” I slurped up the saliva and casually looked away. “Will it be fine? I was warned against going into the human settlement.”

”Should be.” Crane frowned, and stopped walking just on the edge of a tiled eave. “You can pass as my bound Spirit Beast.”

”I’d rather not.” My nose curled at the thought of being bound to a human like that. Even acting like one was unsettling. “I’ll just walk around and keep to the shadows.”

I wanted to look around Steadfast anyway. All I’d seen so far was the ruined village and destroyed remnants of what once was. It’d been nice to get a look at a place that wasn’t totally filled with monsters trying to kill me. 

He shrugged, which caused me to bounce around on his shoulders lightly. “Be careful, yeah? I don’t want to explain to Heizen how you wound up as a scarf for some noble lady.”

”It’s me they should be afraid of, not the other way around.” Though I would try my best to keep out of sight. I should manage just fine with passing through walls to avoid eyes.

“If you say so, little fox.” He just shook his head and jumped across the gap to the next building over. 

I turned my eyes back to him with Eye of the Recorder, and watched how the qi flowed through him while he used the Purity Art. Slowly, ever so slowly, I started to make sense of it. It was basically controlling the qi through the meridians, and then spiking the qi out. Just before it could fully leave, it was drawn back in and returned to the cycle. The spiking out, though, pushed off anything that didn’t belong.

Hmm… if I changed the pattern just a bit, couldn’t it, like, tear my body apart? A shiver went down my spine, though the idea definitely had merit. Not on myself, naturally. If I could do that to one of the blighted though, wouldn’t it be pretty effective? 

I shook my head and focused back on myself, and the flow of my own qi. The pattern had to change, but now that I knew what did what, it was far easier to adjust. The overall shape and form of it wasn’t as important as I thought it was. As long as the core stayed mostly the same, then the rest could be moved around to better fit.

Just as I started to feel like I was getting somewhere, Crane stopped. I nearly flopped off his shoulder with the shift in momentum. ”We’re here.”

”Already?” I blinked, and looked forward. 

Crane hadn’t immediately gone into Steadfast, and instead stopped on a tall building looking down onto it. Steadfast was like a village within a Dragon Vein Village. Slapstick walls of wood, rock, metal, and just about anything they could get their hands on kept the blighted out. 

Just walls and blockades wouldn’t stop the blighted. Especially the more powerful variants who could go over or through them. The humans knew that too, so pipework laced all over the wall. Blue flames lit up every section of it, creating a nearly impenetrable field of light. Not only that, but guards patrolled along the top. Most of them were armed with spears and those barrel-things.

“What are those?” I pointed toward one of the guards. “The barrel-things. I keep seeing people with them.”

”Flintlocks?” Crane frowned, and shrugged. “They're a ranged weapon.”

“I knew that.” The part about them being a weapon, not the name. They reeked of the explosive powder-scent. Flintlock, though, huh? Weird… 

I hopped off Crane’s shoulders and inspected Steadfast’s main gate. It was open with a whole contingent of guards killing the occasional blighted that dared to get close. Not many did, though, thanks to the radiant spirit flame braziers set up around the place.

From the gate, people came and went in small numbers. Most of them looked like various scavengers braving the monster-filled village, though there were more heavily armored Jade Guard patrols leaving in small units.

Crane let me take it in for a moment before speaking up, “meet me here by… noon?”

I glanced up at the cloudy sky. How could he tell what time was noon with the constant storm? “Yip.”

“Watch yourself. It may not look like much, but that place is full of sleeping dragons and tigers.” Crane frowned, and dropped his hand onto his sword’s hilt. “Most of the weak were purged with the Ophidian Blight. Now Steadfast is like a Poison Gu.”

Poison Gu… that sounded faintly familiar. Where—? Ah, right, one of the medical manuscripts I read. Basically, a Gu cultivator would capture dozens of poisonous creatures and force them into a jar. The last surviving creature would have a much more concentrated poison.

My ears flatted to the side of my head at the thought. I’d have to be even more careful moving around than I originally thought. Wraithwalk wasn’t full proof by any means. “I will.”

”Then I’ll see you in a bit.” Crane moved to the ledge of the roof and dropped off with a flourish of his robes.

I waited around for a bit longer before following after him. I didn’t go toward the gate like he did, though. Instead, I wrapped around the wall of Steadfast and got to the most lit up point. Since it was the most lit up, it was the least guarded by human hands. That was perfect for me.

Qi drained out of me as I activated Wraithwalk and smoothly slid through the dense wall protecting the village within the village. Getting in and out wasn’t an issue for me. Actually navigating the inside of Steadfast, though? That was a whole other matter entirely.

The press of humanity caught me off guard when I slipped out onto the other side. The scents and sights washed over me, making my head churn in confusion at all the new things. People tightly bundled up in clothing walked the streets without fear. Carts moved around carrying goods, and I even spotted a horse-drawn carriage emblazoned with noble sigils.

The scents, though, were much more telling. The rotten scale scent of the Ophidian Blight didn’t fade even on this side of the wall. Instead, vast amounts of perfume and odor pouches swelled through the air as if trying to hide the scent of the blight. They may be trying to pretend the blight didn’t exist safely behind their walls, but reality was a harsh truth.

Before doing anything, I darted across the street and slipped into a building. It was a bakery of some kind. Instead of just getting on the roof like I planned, I casually sauntered around the place to a cooling rack full of bread. Wraithwalk dropped, and I scarfed down a few pieces. A little hard and dry, but free food is free food.

I almost reached for another piece, but footsteps came my way. I instantly ducked back into invisibility with Wraithwalk, and jumped into the wall. From there, I climbed up through the roof and popped out on the slick tiles above. 

The whole village filled with still living humans opened up before me. I watched them move around the streets for a moment and a weirdly nostalgic feeling filled me. My snout dipped into a frown. This should be the first time I’d ever been around humans in mass, yip?

Lightning flashed overhead, and I instinctively hunched back toward the tiled roof. Rain rapidly soaked into my pelt once more. Whatever. I looked around Steadfast. Where to next?

— — —

AN: This one took a while. That’s in part thanks to my renewed efforts on Stormfall. I decided to completely rewrite it once more. It just wasn’t hitting like I wanted it to, unfortunately. I’ve got the attention span of a mayfly, I swear.

Myth//OS is still coming at some point, ‘course. I hit a part where I just can’t decide where I want it to go. As soon as I get over that, though, Myth//OS will start back up.