Paired Cultivation, A Threads of Fate Universe Story: Chapters 11-15 + Epilogue (Patreon)

Chapter 11

Plan Z was unlike anything else my team and I had come up with. To be fair, we came up with Plans A through F before the idea for Plan Z came about. Plan A was a simple all-out assault, each of us targeting a different member of the opposing team. We didn’t end up using that, but it was the most basic idea we had, so it was Plan A. Plan B was more of a standard strategy with Keiko and Roderigo up front while Melody and I hung in back to support. That was more of a natural state for us, so we ended up using that in our first match. Plan C was put in place to allow Melody to float to the front alongside Keiko, I had no idea why that was a plan until I learned about Melody’s unique bloodline. Plans D, E, and F were all just variations on the previous plans, with very small changes made among them.

Plans Z was an entirely different beast. It was among the most dangerous of the plans we had devised, and it was very high-risk, high reward. Plan Z was risky, but knowing how powerful our opponents are going to be, we would need to use everything we had at our disposal to win.

Roderigo and Melody stepped to the front and started limbering up while Keiko and I stayed as far back from our opponents as possible. Keiko and I exchanged a nod before focusing all of our qi in word in preparation for what was going to come next.

Less than thirty seconds later, the announcers voice erupted again. “Final-round! Team Steven versus team up Marco Marcos. May the best team win!” The cloud wrote the crowd roared in approval as the sound of aloud one could be heard.

Unlike our other plans, Plan Z didn’t actually involve any sort of rush towards our opponents. Instead, it involved Melody doing her best to create ramparts for our opponents to have to deal with while Roderigo created small metal spikes that were then covered with earth qi using skills he learned from Melody. After that, they were scattered among the ramparts ahead of us while Keiko and I focused on harnessing as much qi as humanly possible via Orbital breathing.

To their credit, Marcos’ team did not rush headfirst into the field of obstacles that Roderigo and Melody had created. Instead, they methodically picked their way through the hazards until they approached the large wall that Melody was continually pumping earth qi into. For every second she spent doing that, the height of the wall increased by six inches and thickness increased by an inch.

From across the wall, my whole team could hear Marcos laughing. “Hiding behind your little wall? I always knew you were more sheep than wolf. Thou you would’ve made such lovely additions to my flock that I had to try to bring you in.” The sneer was audible in his tone. “It’s almost a shame that Terrence and Lynette have to kill you today, but they don’t really know their own strength considering they only recently advanced to become Meridian cultivators. I hope you don’t go down too easily; they need to get their aggression out!”

The earthen rampart crunched as Terrence and Lynette pounded on it. Melody grunted while reinforcing the wall. Roderigo gave up on making floor hazards and walked over to help his wife reinforce the semi-circle of earthen wall that was all that protected Keiko and my helpless forms along with the rest of our team from the onslaught of our foes.

Roderigo turned back and yelled toward Keiko and I. “How much more time do you need? They’re pounding through the wall almost as fast as we can build it up, maybe faster.”

Keiko and I were in no place to answer that question, even though we were likely very close to being ready. Formed between each of our outstretched hands were large balls of condensed qi. We were nearly ready to use the technique from the scroll Dusk gave us, but the final step was the most dangerous. Harnessing the power generated from the air around us along with my enlarged lower core meant that we were using quite a bit more energy than the scroll probably intended, but we had no other choice.

I grunted toward Roderigo, “In three seconds, drop the earth wall and throw yourselves to the ground. This thing doesn’t discriminate friend from foe.” It took all of my energy to not lose control of the two foot in diameter ball of pure qi that I was holding while I spoke. Beside me, Keiko had a similarly large sized ball of qi that she was also struggling to control.

Two seconds later a fist came through the earthen wall and attempted to grab Melody’s arm, but Roderigo dropped an ax kick on that wrist before grabbing her around the waist and throwing both of them back along the ground, away from the earth qi wall. As soon as Melody stop focusing on the earthen wall, it crumbled and revealed the entire opposing team arrayed behind it. Marcos, his wife, and their two hirelings were all smiling wickedly as they approached the fallen earth wall.

It was time for them to learn why Keiko and I were not to be trifled with. With a combined roar, Keiko and I merged our spheres of qi and quickly condensed them down into the area between our touching palms before pointing the aforementioned palms and fingertips toward Marcos’ team.

At first, Marcos looked amused at what he thought was nothing more than a parlor trick, before he felt the waves of qi rolling off of Keiko and my clenched hands.

Marcos screamed out, “Protect me …!”

But it was too late.

Keiko and I screamed in unison as we unleashed a condensed beam of qi that was nearly the width of half a stick of incense in a slicing arc that swept across the battlefield from side to side through our opponents and then straight into the barrier protecting the spectators from the contestants. I heard the barrier groan as a multitude of black and white robe cultivators rushed up and reinforced the barrier as they frantically pushed qi into pedestals placed strategically around the arena.

After five seconds of unadulterated destruction, the qi gathered by Keiko and I ran out and the qi beam broke up into the component parts of qi it was made of. Keiko and I were left wide-eyed, with mouths agape, as we took in the destruction wrought by our combined efforts. Not only did our attack go through the torsos of Marcos’ entire team, it also nearly destroyed the barrier that was supposed to be effective against everything up to and including a Saint cultivator. That amount of destruction was nearly unheard of below the level of Duke cultivator and as far as I knew, there were very few of those in the Empire. Each one of them were in charge of a very large tract of land, due to their strength and supposed ability to lead.

Keiko and I strode forward, holding each other up, to survey all the damage we had wrought against Marcos’ team. His two attack dogs were killed instantly, the beam of qi cut straight through their heart cores and their hearts, leaving them in four smoking pieces. Marcos and his wife fared just a little bit better, instead of bisecting them, instead it merely cut off their heads, as they ducked to try and avoid the beam of qi instinctively.

It was all I could do to not retch, but Keiko remained steely in her resolve. Melody started puking when she saw our opponents state, so Roderigo stood and patted her on the back until her stomach settled down.

Above us, instead of the announcer, it was Dusk who announced the winner. He floated nearly sixty feet above the battlefield and roared out to the crowd. “Congratulations to team Steven! They have bested Team Marcos and will now receive their award from the Inheritance itself!” Dusk looked down at Keiko and I and beamed excitedly.

In my ear I heard a whispered voice that sounded a lot like Dusk. “I had a feeling that you two would be able to use that that technique. It was always a favorite of Dawn and I to study, but we never actually pulled it off. There was always something missing from our qi collections that stopped us from being able to do anything with it. I’m glad to see that you figured it out.” I felt the small trail of wind qi slink away from my ear and turned up to look at a beaming Dusk. It felt good to make him proud.

A deep, bellowing, eternal sounding voice sounded throughout the tournament grounds. It stopped everyone mid-sentence as they waited for the voice to finish. “Team Steven, approach the center of the battlefield to receive your rewards.” The voice shook the entire main hall and even people who weren’t here to watch the fights walked over to see what the commotion was.

Keiko and I walked over to help Roderigo and Melody up before we walked together toward the center of the battlefield. As we stood there, a golden light appeared beneath our feet and we were whisked away to a different place.

My hand that was holding Melody’s shoulder was now empty, but my hand that was grasping Keiko’s hand was still full. I blinked until my eyes started to work again and took in the room around me. We were in a small ten-foot by twelve-foot room with walls covered in weapons, armor, and other magical gear. However, despite Keiko’s usual impulsiveness, she managed to reign in her pathological need for shiny objects for just a minute so we could get our bearings. Ahead of us, we saw a large pedestal with two large gemstones set into it, one ruby and one sapphire. Keiko and I exchanged nods and, holding each other’s hand, we approached the pedestal from across the room.

When we got to within two feet of the pedestal, the sapphire and ruby started to glow and they each produced a small projection of a man and a woman respectively who were smiling from ear to ear watching us as we approached. As soon I saw the two faces in the projection from the gems, I knew exactly who they were. Those were the people who created the Inheritance that Keiko and I had been benefiting from the last couple of months.

Keiko and I fell to our knees and kowtowed. “Your humble servants thank you, O great ones, for the opportunity to train within your fantastic facility. We hope we made you proud.” My voice was shaking so badly that it was hard to finish that last line, but I did my best.

The same deep male voice that asked our team to approach the center of the arena spoke up again, but this time the voice sounded happier, rather than more competitive, if that makes sense. He laughed. “Both of you get up, I don’t like it when potential true inheritors bow down to me. You may call me Sapphire and my wife Ruby, assuming you even address us.”

The female face, Ruby, started speaking and her voice was like that of the best innkeeper’s wife, stern but caring. “I don’t mind a little bit of deference; we did build the entire demi-plane that they were training within. A little bit of recognition goes a long way.”

Sapphire roared with laughter, “Right you are my dear, how can I ever have doubted you?”

Ruby merely smiled when she saw Keiko and I peeking our heads up to get a better look at our benefactors.

Before I could speak, Sapphire continued. “Congratulations on your win, Steven and Keiko! I assure you that Roderigo and Melody are just fine, they are receiving their rewards as we speak.”

I released the breath I hadn’t known I was holding. If I had to guess, I was subconsciously very worried about the state of Roderigo and Melody after parting ways with them.

The man continued. “We have three choices for what your potential rewards could be for winning the tournament in such a spectacular fashion. Dear, would you care to outline the options for the young cubs? I know you like to talk about the shiny things with the youths.” He smiled wide.

The woman outlined in Ruby smiled back at her husband and smiled. “You would be correct dear, though I do prefer my audiences to be better dressed.”

A second later, I felt a surge of qi rush through the room Keiko and I were in and when I looked down at my body, I saw that the gi I was wearing was replaced with a resplendent robe of gleaming gold, while Keiko’s was the same robe in bright silver.

We marveled at our new clothing while Ruby continued. “That’s much better. Here are your three potential rewards for winning the tournament. Option one, which is the most boring; you may gain 10,000 points to use for whatever you may wish within the Inheritance. Option two is a bit more exciting; four items of your choice from the second level of the vault.”

Keiko and I gasped, from what we’d heard almost no one ever got access to the second level of the vault, and it was unheard of for anyone to get more than one treasure from up there.

Ruby laughed when she saw Keiko and my reaction. “The second level of the vault contains items that would be very beneficial to your cultivation, there may even be items that can push the pair of you straight into the realm of Saint cultivators.”

Keiko gasped. “You’re saying that we could push all the way from Heart level cultivators all the way to that of Saint?”

Sapphire laughed, “Back in our time, things like that were commonly given to the firstborn of many noble houses and clans. Is that not the case in the current time?”

Keiko shook her head vigorously, “No, I’ve only ever heard of cultivation aids that could bring a Body cultivator up to the level of a Meridian cultivator, though it wouldn’t surprise me if there were some that would do the same for Brain cultivators. From what I’ve heard, breaking through to the level of Saint requires a level of understanding that cultivation aids can’t give you.”

Ruby nodded appreciatively, “Well spoken. That is indeed the case, though Nirvana Incense helps push past that barrier.”

“Pardon me Mistress Ruby or Master Sapphire, but would either of you please explain what the third option would be? I am most curious to hear what could possibly compare to the splendor and extravagance of what you’ve already described.”

I spoke up at that point because I was worried that Keiko would immediately request the four items from the second level of the vault. I had a feeling that the third option was going to be something irreplaceable. Plus, it couldn’t hurt to polish their egos a little bit, they obviously hadn’t been a part of the world at large in quite some time.

The pair of gemstone projections laughed heartily before Sapphire spoke up. “I see what you’re doing, trying to butter us up with talk of how wonderful our previous options were, but I can’t say I don’t appreciate it.”

Ruby nodded in agreement. “I have to say, the third option is a bit different than the previous two. You have to forego both of the two choices you have now to gain access to the third choice.”

Keiko and I exchanged a glance, but I felt the need to talk to her, to discuss our options with her. I felt Keiko’s need to do the same and after a moment felt something click inside our linked lower cores.

I heard her inside my head. “I really wish I could discuss this with Steven … hold on a second, can you hear me?” Her internal voice sounded excited and worried at the same time.

I did my best to reply in the same way, “Yeah, I can hear you, but there’s no time for us to marvel at this new ability. What do you think of our options?”

“I think that the first option is off the table, we have more points than we need as is.”

“I agree, I think the first option was presented for those who wouldn’t have had the patience to wait for the other options to be presented.”

Part of me knew that if I wasn’t here, Keiko might have been one of those impatient people who didn’t wait for the other options to be arrayed. Then again, after spending a lifetime with her, she had often proved me wrong, so maybe that wasn’t true.

“Alright, so our other choice is if we think four items from the second level of the vault are worth more than the potential third option. I know that if I never got to hear what the third option was, I’d never forgive myself. The fear of what I might have been able to have would eat me alive!”

I guess I was wrong about her a bit ago, she definitely would have waited to hear everything, she was too curious not to.

“I agree. At this point, no matter what the third option is, we’re ahead of the curve. We’ve met the progenitors of this place, how many other potential inheritors in here can say that?”

“So, we agree? We go with option three?”

I grabbed her hand and spoke to Sapphire and Ruby. “We’re going with option three.”

To my surprise, the tiny projection of Ruby started clapping. “Well discussed, I’m impressed that you managed core communication at the Heart level. You two are prodigies, even by our time’s standards.”

Well, there goes the idea that we had any level of privacy for our conversation, though I guess it’s not surprising that the people who created the space we’re in would be able to know everything going on inside.

Sapphire grinned. “I was hoping you would go with option three, it’s my favorite!” He took a moment to sweep his gaze from Keiko and then back to me. “Option three is simple, but at the same time very complex.”

Keiko and I nodded. We were ready to hear what our choice had earned us.

“Choice three is two picks from the third level of the armory and then one change to the rules of the inheritance … within reason, of course.”

It was my turn to gasp now. Two picks from the third level of the vault! No one had ever taken anything from there before, I’m not even sure how many things were up there, seeing as no one had ever even seen what was there.

That’s not even touching on the ability to change a rule of the inheritance itself. We could do so much for those who were downtrodden in here, but doing so would take way too many changes. I didn’t even know where to start.

Keiko surprised me by squeezing my hand before speaking. “I have a question about the rules change.”

Where was she going with this?

Ruby smiled, “I’ll happily answer any question you may have about that.”

“Would we be able to give Dawn and Dusk freer rein? I am confident that they would be able to do a better job in changing this Inheritance for the better than we would be able to with one rule change.” Keiko showed a toothy grin.

I hadn’t even considered that. Dawn and Dusk would be in a much better place to make changes than we ever could. Keiko never ceased to amaze me.

Sapphire and Ruby exchanged a glance before she turned to nod toward Keiko and I. “That would be an acceptable rule change, though they would not be able to change the requirements to enter the Inheritance.”

Keiko looked up at me and I beamed down at her before nodding softly.

She laughed softly before looking back to Sapphire and Ruby. “We would like to make that change to the rules please. Please allow Dawn and Dusk freer rein to adjust the Inheritance to fit the situations they find themselves, and the Inheritance itself, in.”

The gemstone pair clapped their hands in unison and a pulse of gold and silver qi roared out from them before they spoke in unison. “IT IS DONE!” Both of them looked a lot more tired after doing that.

Keiko and I bowed low. “Thank you very much!” Keiko’s smile was even wider than before.

Ruby smiled, “We were happy to do it. We don’t appreciate what some people have been doing in our Inheritance and we are glad to know that the incoming generation of cultivators are doing their best to make things right.”

Sapphire sat down cross-legged in the projection. “In order to keep the Inheritance stable, we couldn’t change very many things … unless someone were to meet the requirements we set long before.” He stared intently at Keiko and I before continuing. “You two are the first to ever meet those requirements. You awakened to something ancient that has been long forgotten and that’s why you met our requirements.”

I had no idea what they were talking about. As far as I knew, Keiko and I just condensed qi so that we could use the scroll Dusk gave us. I wondered if there was something else that we did that was unusual, but for the life of me I couldn’t think of anything. On another note, there is one thing I had to ask while I had the progenitors in front of me.

I bowed my head until it touched the floor in front of me, kowtowing toward them. “Ruby, Sapphire, I do have one more question for you if that’s all right.” I kept my tone as reverent as possible.

Ruby chuckled, “We can answer one more question, we have time for that, but after doing so we will need to leave. Every minute we spend with you drains the Inheritance’s energy reserves by a dramatic amount.”

I sat up on my knees and bowed my head again before. “I know that this is the Inheritance of the Lovers, but I found a book mentioning the Inheritance of the Eclipse and the book mentioned that people who came from here would often go there afterward, but as far as I know … no one’s ever really returned from there. Even Dawn and Dusk said they didn’t end up going.” I pleaded to them with my eyes. “Why? Why would people who had access to this Inheritance want to go to the Inheritance of the Eclipse?”

Ruby looked to Sapphire and nodded her head for him to answer.

Sapphire sighed deeply. “The Inheritance of the Eclipse is significantly older than our Inheritance. It was ancient when ours was new, so the knowledge contained therein is likely much older and could be much more powerful. We also know that before our Inheritance was created, that was the only Inheritance that taught paired cultivation and the beings who studied there became incredibly powerful, both as a pair and alone if they progressed far enough.”

Both Ruby and Sapphire grunted in pain and a grimace flashed across their faces before Sapphire continued. “Our time grows short; I would recommend that if you are intending to grow together as paired cultivators to get what you can out of this Inheritance and then leave it to experience the world. Make sure to ask Dawn for a map that will track the current entrance to the Inheritance. There should be one available for you. Though if you take one of the items that I think you might from the third level of the vault, I don’t think you’ll need it. Better safe than sorry.”

Sapphire and Ruby both glowed brightly and started to dissolve into pigments of light as she said one last thing. “Fear not that what was once forgotten, but beware what has become commonplace. Good luck.”

With a final burst of red and blue light, the inheritors’ projections were sucked back into the large gemstones set into the pedestal, leaving Keiko and I alone in the opulent room.

For what could have been no time at all or an eternity, but was probably closer to an hour, we didn’t do anything. We just sat there and reflected on what we just learned. Eventually Dawn and Dusk arrived with a pop and took one look at us before smiling.

Dawn walked over and placed her hand on my shoulder while Dusk did the same for Keiko. “Meeting them can be a lot, we both know it.” She exchanged a glance with Dusk before continuing. “We can see that you’re both in shock and if you’d permit us to do so, we will deposit you in your bedroom so that you can recover in peace. Don’t worry about Roderigo and Melody, they are already resting in their rooms.

I was in too much shock to answer, but Keiko had the wherewithal to nod softly.

Dusk chuckled, “I’ll take that as permission.”

Chapter 12

The days following the tournament were much calmer than our previous two days, they were spent enjoying the company of our friends Melody and Roderigo as well as discussing with them things we hoped to find in the vault.

It turned out that Melody and Roderigo had been granted one pick each from both the first and second levels of the armory. Keiko and I advised them to look through the second level before the first, but to not pick anything until they’d gone through everything. Due to restrictions placed on us by the Inheritance, we didn’t explain in detail why, but we heavily implied that we knew this from experience. There were more than a few heated glances drawn between Keiko and I during our conversation.

One week after the end of the tournament both couples decided it was time to make their choices from the vault. Roderigo and Melody had a trick to show us that shocked both Keiko and I. Instead of hunting down Dawn and Dusk in the main hall, they called for them.

“Dawn and Dusk, we are ready to make our selections in the vault!” The other couple yelled out happily.

Less than ten seconds later, both Dawn and Dusk appeared in our living room.

Dusk quirked an eyebrow at the other couple, “You two ready to make your picks?” They nodded eagerly. He turned to Keiko and I. “What about you two? Are you ready?”

Keiko and I nodded before she decided to ask a question we discussed beforehand. “Is there any chance that we will be able to go in there with them?” She pleaded with her big puppy dog eyes.

Dusk shook his head sadly, “I’m sorry, but that cannot be done. At one point we were able to do that, but one couple decided to slaughter the other couples who went in with them and took their items. Ever since then, the Inheritance only allowed in two living beings to the vault at any one time.”

Keiko looked pained, but I just nodded. “It makes sense, having seen what’s in there, I can see why people might react that way when they saw a way to get more treasures.” I looked at Keiko, Rodrigo, Melody before turning back to Dawn and Dusk. “If it’s all right, we would like for Roderigo and Melody to go in first. We already had our pick of the first level and we think it’s about time that they got their chance.”

Dawn laughed from behind Dusk. “Is everyone okay with this?” Everyone else nodded their assent.

Dawn clapped her hands. “Well, that settles it. Roderigo, would you and Melody please walk over and take my hands.” She held out her hands to her sides and they did as she asked.

Right before grabbing her hand Roderigo turned and shot Keiko and I a big grin. “Thank you guys so much! We’ll see you soon.” Immediately after that, he grabbed Dawn’s hand and the trio disappeared, leaving Dusk alone with Keiko and I.

He looked around conspiratorially, like he was trying to make sure no one else was listening and before leaning in to speak to us. “So, what you think of the old lady and the old man?”

Keiko looked shocked while I fell back onto the couch laughing. She turned to glare at me, but I was too busy laughing to notice at the time.

Keiko stamped her foot indignantly. “I, for one, thought they were lovely. You two are being very disrespectful.” She huffed as she stomped her foot again.

Keiko’s response just made Dusk burst out laughing the same way I was as he took a seat on the opposing couch. We took a few moments to collect ourselves.

Keiko stamped her foot again before stalking off to go and do katas with the sparring dummy in the corner. She didn’t even turn around to glare at us again, she was that mad.

Dusk looked over toward where Keiko had walked off and looked at me expectantly, but I shook my head. “Don’t worry about that, she’s a bit of a hothead and when people set her off, she knows that it’s best if she just goes off and spars or does katas for a little while so that she can calm down.”

“Alright, that makes sense, but you didn’t answer my question. What you think of them?”

I tapped my chin thoughtfully. “I like how willing to change things they were once we explained what was needed. They were also a wonderful source of information about the Inheritance of the Eclipse.”

Dusk whistled appreciatively. “Yeah, I could tell you did something, because Dawn and I felt like we had a lot freer rein to do what’s needed here. We’ve been able to stop those people who were trying to use pseudo-slave contracts within the Inheritance’s walls. Before, we would’ve just had to make sure nothing overt was being done. I assume you two had something to do with that?”

I smiled, but didn’t answer directly.

Dusk chuckled. “I’ll take that as a ‘maybe’. Either way, it takes a lot of guts to ask questions of beings as powerful as them, do you think it was worth it?”

I laughed heartily again. “Absolutely, they gave me advice that’ll be useful until my dying day.” Seeing the confusion on Dusk’s face, I continued. “They basically said that the Inheritance is a great resource, but it’s life experience that will make you truly powerful. They also said something else. They said, ‘Fear not that what was once forgotten, but beware what has become commonplace’.” Dusk nodded approvingly. “I still haven’t really thought about what it might mean, but I get the distinct impression that it’s going to shape the rest of our lives.”

“In the few conversations I’ve had with them, they’ve always been very direct. Seldom have we had a chance to actually ask them questions, so what you did is very rare. You should cherish and think deeply on anything they said to you, because when someone reaches their level, they have a much greater understanding of the natural world than the average person.”

I nodded in agreement and he and I chatted for the next hour as we waited for Melody and Roderigo to return. Eventually, Keiko came over and sat next to me on the couch, but she didn’t look Dusk directly in the in the face. I could tell that she was more embarrassed by what she had said than she was angry about what Dusk had said. Eventually I cajoled her into apologizing, but Dusk waved her off saying that he was used to it seeing as Dawn was the same way.

Keiko, Dusk, and I chatted for about thirty more minutes before Dusk sat up perfectly straight. He reached out his hands for Keiko and I to take. “Looks like it’s your turn, we should get moving, the Inheritance is about to move and we really don’t want to be shifting about this place while it’s mid-motion. Trust me, I got stuck in a wall for over a week one time.”

Keiko and I exchanged a glance before we each reached out for his hands. As soon as our hands touched his, we were transported to a familiar hallway with a familiar very large door made of golden metal.

Dusk waved to for Keiko and I to approach the door and as we did, they door slid open, just enough for Keiko and I to slide through single file.

We bowed to Dusk and bid him farewell as we slipped through the doorway toward our reward.

As we walked into the area were all the items were kept, Keiko and I considered walking around to see what was taken from the first and second levels, but eventually we decided against it. We wanted to have as much time as possible to spend considering what we might take, rather than trying to figure out what Roderigo and Melody ended up with.

As we stood at the base of the stairs leading toward the second and third vault levels Keiko turned to me. “Race to the top? Winner gets to pick what we have for dinner for the next week?”

I pondered for a moment as I gathered wind qi in my lower core before responding. “Sounds good, see you at the top.” With a tremendous surge of wind qi blasting from my heels I rocketed up past the second level, leaving Keiko in the dust, or that’s what would’ve happened if Keiko hadn’t done exactly the same thing, but from her hands instead of her heels.

She landed half a step behind me and as we scrambled up the incredibly steep stairs to the third level, we laughed the whole way. The only thing that let me win was that my incredibly long legs took the tall stairs in stride, while Keiko’s short ones seemed to have a bit more trouble.

I stood at the top of the stairs, triumphant, as Keiko crested the stairway. “I win! Looks like were having my favorites all week. I think will start off with a classic, Blazing Elk and Zephyr Rice balls.” I grinned from ear to ear as I watched Keiko frown.

She groaned, “Again? We ate so much of it last month, I’m tired of it. Can you at least cook me some Iron Crab dumplings to go with them?” She looked at me with her best innocent look, but I was unaffected.

I snorted, “No can do, you and I both agreed to the terms. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure that you get your doses of water and metal qi, but I won’t promise where they come from.”

We strode to the middle of the very small third level and saw that there were merely six different pedestals with items on them. Each of them had a glass case covering them, and when I inspected the qi around me, I saw threads of it running through the glass of all the items. There would be no taking more than we deserved up here.

Seeing as there were only six items, Keiko and I decided that it would be wise if we inspected each item at length.

The first item was a large broad-bladed sword, it was nearly four feet in length, not counting the hilt. With the hilt, it was nearly five and a half feet long. The information panel below the item described it: Heaven’s Razor, Celestial Grade sword made from Sky Metal. It will never dull, and serves as an excellent outlet for qi of all types.

Keiko drooled over that sword for quite a while before we moved on, she was insistent that she needed it if she was going to be fulfilling the role she wanted in combat. Eventually, I was able to drag Keiko away from the sword and over to a gorgeous silver bracelet with green gems studded along it. The description plate labeled it as The Earth Mover. It was another Celestial Grade artifact made with Celestial Grade Earth Cores along with Celestial Grade metals. It claimed amplify the Earth qi produced by anyone wearing it by ten times. Seeing as neither Keiko, nor I, were specialists with Earth qi we didn’t really feel the need to keep staring at that one.

The next was a set of four odd earrings, two white, and two black. However, they were paired up with one white and one black each, not white with white and black with black. The inscription plate called these the Earrings of the Eclipse. It stated that they were the token needed to enter the Inheritance of the Eclipse, and that this was the only set outside of Sunset Island.

However, I felt drawn to this set of earrings and when I discussed it with Keiko, so did she. I felt like there was more to that item than met the eye, even more than the description plate said. Still thinking about, that we turned the next item.

The fourth item was a small one. It was a golden tile roughly one inch square that was inscribed with an incredible number of runes. The inscription plate called it Lovers Embrace. The district was very simple: this tile allows a pair of Saint Level or higher cultivators to transport themselves directly into the Inheritance of the Lovers from anywhere.

Keiko and I both stared at each other, that could be a game changer. It would allow us to escape from a bad situation and stop us from worrying about finding a way back to the Inheritance. It took everything we had not to just snatch it up immediately, but we knew that we needed to see all of the items before we made our final choices.

The second to last item were a matching set of robes to the ones that we were already wearing. Keiko and I found out that the robes that we received from Ruby and Sapphire were actually incredibly powerful protective items. The inscription called them the Robes of Sun and Moon. They were incredibly resistant to qi attacks and relatively resistant to physical attacks. Seeing as we already had those, we moved on to the last item.

The final item was strange. It was a six-inch cube with two black faces, two gold faces, and two silver faces. Black was always opposite black, same with the rest of the colors. The inscription wasn’t much help. It merely listed the item as being a Mystery Cube. Though it was called out as a Heavenly Grade artifact, it was also noted that no one had actually been able to discover the means to operate it.

Keiko and I stood staring at the Mystery Cube for quite a while, but despite what the inscription plate said, we both felt drawn to this item. It was strange, it almost felt like coming back to a friend you’ve left for a long time. Despite that, we decided that we should go to the center of this area and talk about our options.

We sat down on the floor in the center of the tiny platform and discussed our options. Despite Keiko’s initial insistence that she needed the sword, we agreed that taking a weapon probably wasn’t the best way for us to grow as cultivators. We didn’t even discuss the robes, seeing as we were already wearing the same ones. That left us with four items, two of which were going to be coming home with us. We considered taking the bracelet, but it didn’t really feel right for either of us even though we both agreed that Melody would snatch it up without any hesitation. Then, we were down to three options.

Seeing as our next major goal was to visit the Inheritance of the Eclipse, we knew that we needed the earrings so we marked that is one of our items we would be grabbing for sure.

Choosing between the last two items was difficult, the Tile of Lover’s Embrace was sorely tempting. Unlike the Mystery Cube, we knew exactly what it would do. The problem was that we were not nearly powerful enough to operate it. We were a far cry from becoming Saint level cultivators at this point and having something like that would lead us to become complacent once we got to that level. In the end, we decided to take the Mystery Cube. We didn’t really know why, just that it felt right for us and that it was something that we would end up being glad we had.

First, we went and grabbed the earrings and immediately put them on. To our chagrin, we feel any different wearing them, but in time we would understand their worth. Finally, we went to grab the Mystery Cube and as soon as we touched it, it glowed a bright golden light for just a second before going dim again. When we inspected the cube after picking it up, one of the golden panels had some kind of arcane writing on it that neither Keiko nor I could actually read.

I grinned at Keiko. “Looks like we have new mystery to solve. Let’s get out of here, I’m hungry for some Blazing Elk.” Keiko groaned but followed me as I headed down the stairs towards the door.

The time leading up to Keiko and my initial departure from the Inheritance of the Lovers was the best time of my life up to that point. It was time spent with my lover and people who had become my best friends. Keiko and I stayed active by teaching as many classes for the apprentices and initiates that we could. We found it very rewarding to teach others how to cultivate properly, it gave us an incredible sense of satisfaction that honestly surprised both of us. Neither one of us were from big families, actually neither one of us even had any siblings. So, when we learned that we enjoyed teaching so much it was a complete surprise to us.

One night when Keiko and I were lying in bed unable to fall asleep, we talked about how when we found a place to call home, we would like to start some kind of school so that we could help other cultivators grow and thrive. To that point, I had not seen Keiko so passionate about anything except me and going into battle, so it was very nice to see that side of her again.

Keiko and I debated spending every point we had before leaving the Inheritance, but seeing as we were planning on coming back, it felt like that would be a waste. We spent enough points to get food for three months to store away in a spatial storage device. We also bought enough camping and travel equipment that we would be quite comfortable when we finally did leave.

Roderigo and Melody wanted to follow Keiko and I, but with our goal being the Inheritance of the Eclipse, there wasn’t much they could do to help us, seeing as they wouldn’t have a way into the Inheritance. After a few days of grumbling, they decided to make the most of the time they had left with us and we enjoyed their company up until our final day in the Inheritance. We ate, drank, laughed, and cultivated together every day. I will always treasure those days. Roderigo and Melody’s final decision was that they would not come with us on the initial trip to Sunset Island, but the next time the Inheritance stopped there, they would come out and join us.

As far as cultivation went, Keiko and I broke through to become Meridian cultivators two days before our planned time of departure from the Inheritance. After our marathon cultivation push post-breakthrough, we were nearly at the mid-stage of Meridian cultivation. We marveled at how much stronger we felt and how much more qi we could use in a single construct, but we remained true to our fighting style and focused on efficiency rather than big showy techniques.

On the final day, Keiko and I met with Dawn and Dusk for something akin to an exit interview. They brought us to the same chamber we woke up in when we entered the Inheritance. It turns out that room is both the entry and exit point for all couples. Dawn and Dusk settled onto one of the divans in the room while Keiko and I grabbed another one. Both of their faces were masks of emotionlessness, but as we spoke with them, I noticed small flashes of sadness and occasionally envy from them.

Dusk grumbled, “I’m happy to hear that the two of you broke through to become Meridian cultivators. If you hadn’t, I would’ve had cause to be worried about you. Sunset Island is no joke, the natives there are all decently powerful cultivators, you won’t find many people at the Body stage there.” Dawn nodded sagely at that.

Keiko chuckled, “I think I can speak for both of us when I say that we appreciate a good challenge. We also enjoy exploring new locales, though we haven’t had much ability to do that since we became adults. As children, we got to explore different parts of the area around our hometown, it felt like we were wilderness explorers out on our own, but Stephen’s grandfather was always following behind us, keeping us safe.” I chuckled softly before she continued. “Either way, I know that those are some of my favorite memories. Time spent in the wilderness, exploring … we didn’t know what was coming, it was incredibly exciting.”

I patted Keiko’s hand softly before grinning at Dawn and Dusk. “We don’t know exactly what the future holds on Sunset Island, but we do know that somewhere on it there is a culture that revolves around protecting the Inheritance of the Eclipse. We’re going to have to figure out how to evade them while entering said Inheritance.” My grin took on a shark-ish gleam. “I’m excited for the opportunity.”

Dawn winced slightly before speaking. “I did a bit of research on Sunset Island before meeting with you today. I have a bit of advice, if you’d care to listen.”

Keiko and I exchanged a look before turning back to her and nodding emphatically. Of course, we wanted as much advice as we could get from Dawn, she was an Emperor level cultivator. If she thought we needed to know something, she was probably right.

She took a deep breath before beginning. “Some of the older records regarding that island talk about how there were three different tribes on the island at one point, but records from about five hundred years ago list two tribes only. Finally, the records from less than one hundred years ago say that there is a single tribe that is left alive on the island and they are the one with the worst reputation of the original three.” I thought I saw her suppress a shiver, but I couldn’t be sure. “From what I’ve read, I think the final remaining tribe is made up of cannibals.”

Dusk, Keiko, and I all gasped before staring at her intently.

She shook her said head softly, “The documentation that I found leads me to believe that’s the case. It appears that they ate most of the other two tribes over time. There’s a chance that a few members of the other two tribes are still around, but they are likely living in hiding from the final tribe, the name of which I believe is the Indus Tribe. Even before they became the dominant tribe on the island, they were always brutal. I don’t suspect that them becoming the dominant force on the island is going to mellow them out at all, so you need to be very careful.”

I nodded in agreement, “Thank you so much for that information, we will do our best to avoid the Indus Tribe and be on the lookout for any survivors from the other two tribes. What were the names of the other two tribes? I want to know in case we do run into any other people on the island.”

“One tribe was, not ironically, called the Sunrise Tribe. They specialized in fire and wind qi techniques. They were the first tribe wiped out. The second were known as the Moonbeam Tribe. They were the second tribe that was wiped out and they specialized in water and metal qi techniques. Both of them were very hospitable to outsiders, inviting them to stay with them if at all possible and also serving to protect them from the Indus Tribe.”

I chuckled softly, “It’s a bit serendipitous that those two tribes match up with both Keiko and my specialties as far as qi goes. Maybe even if we don’t find any living members of the tribes, we can find remnants of the places they lived. We might be able to learn a few techniques that way. Either way, I think I can speak for the both of us in saying that we genuinely appreciate all the help you’ve given us, especially for your help guiding us through becoming an actual couple and teaching us about paired cultivation. There’s no way we would be where we are today without your help.” Keiko and I both bowed low from our seat on the divan.

Dawn got a bit choked up, so Dusk responded for her. “It’s been a pleasure working with you two. I genuinely hope that we see you here again. Be safe out there, okay?”

Keiko giggled softly, “Stephen’s the cautious one, but for you, I’ll make an exception and be a little bit more careful.” I laughed out loud at that.

Dusk looked a bit lost for a second before speaking. “Oh, as for the matter of your room being merged with that of Roderigo and Melody, what you want done with it? Do you want us to split it apart again, or should we just leave it as is?”

I smiled, “Leave it as it is now, as long as they can’t get into our bedroom, I genuinely don’t care if they use the rest of the facilities we purchased. Though if I find out that Roderigo reorganized my kitchen again, I’ll stab him when I get back.”

After a few seconds, all four of us burst out laughing. I knew I was going to miss my time with these two and I thought they felt the same way, I knew Keiko did.

We chatted for a few more moments about nothing at all, mostly just stretching that time we had together until a soft chime sounded in the room.

A soft feminine voice came from the ceiling. “Inheritance transferred to Sunset Island, thirty hours until departure.”

Dawn and Dusk both got up from there divan, so Keiko and I did the same.

Dusk handed me a rolled-up piece of parchment with a grimace. “That’s a map that will show you where the Inheritance’s entrance is at any given time. It’s only good for two years before you have to come back and get it reset, but until then it should help show you two how to get home if you want to.” He paused for a moment before continuing. “Oh, to activate it you need to do Orbital Breathing nearby it. Otherwise, it’ll just show a blank piece of parchment.” He grinned a bit. “We can’t have random people showing up at the entrance and messing with anyone who’s supposed to be here.”

I grinned and stored away the map in my spatial earring. “Thank you so much, Ruby and Sapphire recommended that we ask you for that, but in the time since the tournament, we hadn’t gotten around to it yet. Thanks for thinking of it, it would’ve been rough if we couldn’t come back because we didn’t have a map showing us where to go.”

Keiko and I joined hands and turned to look back toward the wall that we had been told would lead us to the regular world again. When we stood before it, we turned back to wave to Dawn and Dusk with tears in our eyes. We bowed deeply again and spoke in unison. “Thank you so much for everything, we’ll be back soon!”

Without further ado, we turned on our heels and walked toward the wall, which turned into a swirling portal of energy the second before our feet touched it. We didn’t look back to see the tears streaking down Dawn’s face or the worry was all over Dusk’s face, but I saw them out of the corner of my eye and those images stuck in my head. As I stepped through the portal with Keiko, I resolved to return to the Inheritance of the Lovers at some point, because as far as I was concerned it was more of a home then Roh City was with my grandfather gone. I knew that Keiko felt the same, because with her mother gone, her father had become a tyrant and with her newfound freedom, she would never be able to go back to living life as a caged bird.

The portal deposited us on top of a ridge, at the edge of the jungle with an audible popping noise. All around us were jungle plants and the sounds of animals, insects, and other jungle noises. I immediately grabbed Keiko by the arm and dragged her down lower so we wouldn’t stand out as much above the tree cover. She resisted for half a second before realizing what I was doing, at that point she allowed herself to be lowered down.

I took a few moments to sense the qi around me and was shocked by the amount of wood and water qi in the air. It was incredibly humid and there was life all around us. From our vantage point, I could see no fewer than five different kinds of frog, along with over a dozen varieties of flower, and at least one kind of large cat shaped beast.

Until he got acquainted, I resolved myself to stay away from the aforementioned large cat. From my studies, I understood that beasts shaped like cats were often among the most powerful of their level. The weakest of them were the equivalent of peak Heart cultivators and the most powerful of them were the equivalent of Duke level cultivators, or maybe even stronger. I didn’t want to tempt fate by trying to figure out how strong that cat was.

Keiko sent me a mental message, “Sorry to talk to you like this, but I didn’t want to speak out loud and disturb the animals around here. Are we going to stick with our plan or has everything changed because of where we got deposited on the island?”

Our initial plan, before coming here, was to head toward the original area where the Moonrise Tribe lived, but that was nearly halfway across the island from where we were currently standing. Instead, we were deposited less than two days run from the Sunrise Tribe’s original stomping grounds.

I replied to Keiko via mental message, “Yeah, it looks like we’re going to need to change the plan a little bit. Let’s head towards the Sunrise Tribe’s old territory and look around for a while before finding our way across the island to the Moonrise Tribe’s old location.”

Sunset Island was an odd duck when it came to environment. It was split into four nearly perfect sections, with each quarter having their own biome. We currently stood near the border between the mountainous area and the jungle. The Sunrise Tribe were known for their mountaintop retreats, so that’s where we were going to be headed now. The Moonrise Tribe lived deep in an area of deciduous forests, directly opposite the Sunrise Tribe’s normal area of the island. The third biome was the jungle that was the original home of the Indus tribe, though from what we knew of the island they were now living in the ravines of the fourth quarter of the island near the entrance to the Inheritance of the Eclipse.

We had planned to visit the Moonrise Tribe’s ruins first because they were the closest to what we knew, coming from Roh City. Keiko and I were both very familiar with traversing a forested area, but it seemed that fate wasn’t smiling on us at that time. However, we had discussed traversing the mountains with Roderigo and Melody, so it wasn’t like we knew nothing about them.

Keiko nodded to me before slowly slinking down the side of the ridge leading toward the mountainous area. She and I traveled for about an hour, fighting our way through the dense undergrowth of the jungle area, before arriving at the edge of the mountainous area. The mountainous area was magnificent to behold.

The mountainous area was made up of thousands of mountain peaks strung together by rocky outcroppings and gorgeous, lush, valleys. The border between the mountainous area and the jungle area was conspicuously devoid of creatures. It wasn’t until Keiko and I skirted around our first peak that we saw any kind of living being.

When we did see a creature, it was one that Roderigo had warned us about, it was a Rocky Sabercat. Rodrigo told us that, of the non-arctic magical beasts near his hometown, Rocky Sabercats were the most dangerous. They were beasts whose natural wind and earth qi combination led them to be at least meridian level threats, if not Brain or Saint level. From what we could tell, the one we saw was a youth, so we thought we could probably take it in a fight, if need be, but the odds of its parent be nearby was too great to take that chance. We decided to skirt around the current ridge we were walking along to get out of its line of sight, despite it being over a thousand feet away on another ridge.

We waited tensely out of sight for a few minutes, hoping that the big cat would leave and when I poked my head back out around the mountain, I was rewarded with the sight of the big cat being led away by its much larger parent. I nearly sighed in relief before covering my mouth with my hands to prevent the sound from escaping.

I messaged Keiko, “That Rocky Sabercat was definitely waiting for its parent over there. When I poked my head out, I saw a much larger one leading away.”

Her eyes grew wide, “This place is so dangerous. I really wish we had been able to go to the forest first!”

I couldn’t help but agree with her, we knew forests. Mountains were an entirely different animal. However, I didn’t let her know that.

“It’s okay, we have good training from Rodrigo and Melody, we’ll be fine. Let’s hunt down a cave to spend the night in. Hopefully we can find one that isn’t inhabited, I don’t want to have to kill something to find a place to sleep. Also, I don’t really want to sleep where there’s blood everywhere.”

Keiko nodded in agreement and we set off to find a place to rest for the night. It took us nearly two hours to find a suitable cave. It appeared that no beast had been inside it in recent memory, but it made sense why. The thing stunk; it was even worse than Keiko’s training gi back in Roh City when she went a month without having it cleaned. Her father was incensed when he smelled it that he forced her to clean it herself instead of having the servants do it. There was some kind of stars-cursed awful sulfuric smell coming from the back of the cave. It was nearly impossible for either Keiko or I to stand in there for more than a minute or two. After a few minutes of deliberation, we used a combination of water, wind, and fire qi to clean out the back of the cave. It was only about twenty feet deep, so we could see that there wasn’t anything large back there that was making the smell. After about half an hour of intensive cleaning using our qi, the smell was gone.

It turned out that the offending smell came from a clutch of broken eggs from some kind of creature. When we saw the shards of broken egg skitter out the cave and down the cliff side, we breathed a sigh of relief and moved into the cave. I used a combination of fire and wind qi to sweep the rest of the fetid air out of our resting area for the night.

While I was doing that, Keiko took a moment to explore the back of the cave and she found something curious. After about two minutes of searching back there, she came over and showed me a single unbroken egg about the size of a ripe cantaloupe. She batted her eyelashes at me and I knew what she was going to ask.

“It looks like this egg is still intact and I think whatever’s inside might still be alive. Can we keep it?” She batted her eyelashes at me in her most seductive manner.

I considered it for a moment. Assuming that the monster that would hatch out of the egg was useful, the egg could be a great resource. However, if the hatchling was utterly useless, or worse, dangerous, we wouldn’t have much chance to get rid of it before Keiko got attached. I had a bit of an internal debate for almost a minute as Keiko started me imploringly, but in the end I relented.

I sighed and nodded, “Alright, but it’s your job to keep it safe.” I thought for a quick moment before shaking my head, “Actually, give it to me.”

She looked shocked, “What you mean? Why should I give it to you? Do you think I’m not a suitable carrier?” Her face went from shocked, directly to angry and I knew that I needed to do my best to explain what I was thinking before she went ballistic on me.

I held up my hands defensively, “No, but I do know that most eggs want to be kept warm and I can maintain a combination of fire and wind qi around it all day without too much trouble. I know that you’re much better at maintaining a cold aura, so if it turns out that that’s what it wants, I’ll pass it back to you.”

She growled at me for a moment before nodding. “Fine, but please do your best to figure out if it likes warm or cold as quickly as you can.” She reluctantly handed me the egg and I used one of the towels I took from the hot spring to make a sling to hold it.

That night, I figured out that the egg actually did want a cold environment, because when I got it warm its movements slowed down. I gave it back to Keiko and, after helping resituate the sling, she said that the egg was moving every few minutes, rather than once or twice an hour like it did for me. It appeared that the egg was at least semi-close to hatching, because movement as regulars that was very rare for an egg that wasn’t about to hatch. I couldn’t help but wonder what was going to come out of the egg. Nothing Rodrigo and Melody had told us about would come from an egg that size. None of the birds that were adapted hunting in the updrafts of mountainous areas were small, but an egg as large as the one we found was going to hatch into something much larger than the falcons or eagles they told us about.

Either way, Keiko and I were going to have our hands full raising some sort of baby monster in the not-too-distant future.

Our journey through the mountainous region of Sunset Island was as dangerous as it was arduous. We traveled from peak to peak via the valleys in an effort to locate the ruins in the region, but despite traveling for a month we didn’t run into them. Rather, we encountered numerous threats that we dealt with in a myriad of ways.

We figured out very quickly that with Keiko guarding the egg, she was unable to fight as she usually did, so I ended up in the thick of things more often than not. We dealt with Blizzard Ravens, which were large white and black birds who liked to throw shards of ice qi at us. For those, generally I would just send blades of fire and wind qi at them. After a while, I decided that instead of calling it fire and wind qi, I was going to call Inferno qi. The reason being, I was actually merging the fire and wind qi together before they left my body, rather than combining them externally like I used to as a heart or Body cultivator.

After I started thinking of that combination as Inferno qi, I noticed a marked improvement in my ability to both generate the combination of qi and the amount of damage that it seemed to be doing when I used it. I began to consider how cultivation and the way our bodies adapted to qi were all very subjective. Something as simple as giving a combination of qi a proper name increased the efficiency of my body producing it and the power it had.

When I broached the subject with Keiko, she was skeptical at first, but when I demonstrated the difference between a mixture of fire and wind qi and Inferno qi, she saw how much more damage Inferno qi did to the stump I was using as a target. The only visible difference between the two combinations was that Inferno qi was a light green for some reason, while the mixture of fire and wind qi was a more traditional orange and red.

In the days following that conversation Keiko struggled to find any kind of qi combination that she thought could be beneficial to her, but she wasn’t successful. One night, as we sat at a small campfire in a deep cave, I could tell that she was fed up.

She grumbled at first, before becoming louder. “I can’t believe that I can’t come up with any combinations for myself! It would be such a huge advantage if I could think of something like that … I’m just not creative enough.” Her face was mixture of anger and sadness when she looked at me. “Can’t you think of some combinations for me so that I can use them? You’re so much better things like that that I am.” She pleaded with me via puppy dog eyes.

I shook my head sadly, “I’m sorry, but that’s not how it works. It has to be something that occurs to you naturally. After I figured out how Inferno qi worked for me, I did my best to name all the combinations of qi that I’ve used since we became Heart cultivators, but none of them had any visible changes to them when I produced them, neither in effect nor in color. I think it has to be something special … some sort of an epiphany. I’m worried that if I gave you a combination to use and named it for you, you would forever think of that as the name of it and would never come to your own epiphany as to how it should work.” I saw the look of desperation on her face, but there was nothing I could do for her, except be supportive. “I’m sorry, my love, but this is something you have to do for yourself.”

She looked like she wasn’t sure if she wanted to hit me or hug me. Before she could make a decision, however, her head jerked toward the entrance of the cave, which was roughly thirty feet away and around a shallow bend. She cradled the egg protectively with one hand while raising the other toward the entrance.

I hopped to my feet and spun up as much Inferno qi as I could in my lower core, I was ready for anything, or so I thought.

Rumbling around the bend in the tunnel came a large, glowing red shape. As it came into view, it was revealed to be a large molten stone goat. It had to be at least eight feet tall and its solid black horns were actually carving furrows in the roof of the tunnel like it didn’t exist. When it saw us at the back of the cave, it bleated and charged us.

Instead of throwing my Inferno qi as blades, instead I formed it into a shield to cover Keiko, the egg, and I. I knew that a beast like that wasn’t going to even feel what I could do to it with something akin to its own element.

This beast was unlike anything Roderigo or Melody had told us about. It appeared to be, if not made of, at least harnessing both fire and earth qi. For the amount of heat pouring down the tunnel toward us, I got the impression that it was probably at least at the Brain level, if not higher. We were in real trouble and I didn’t know what we were going to do to get out of the situation we found ourselves in.

When I turned to look at Keiko, I saw that she had put the egg behind a rock for protection and was standing up beside me to help. Through our connected lower cores, I felt her whirling together a bunch of water qi, which I thought was a great idea. She leaned around the shield of Inferno qi that I had put up and unleashed a massive stream of water qi at the creature ahead. It bellowed in pain, but it didn’t slow down in the slightest, it was merely fifteen feet from us at that point.

Keiko screamed, “You molten bastard!” I could feel how anguished she was, it was heartbreaking that I couldn’t help more, but I was doing my best keeping the waves of heat rolling off of the Magma Goat, as I decided to call it, from killing us before it even got to us.

A moment later a look of surprise, followed by delight, covered her face. I felt a shift in her lower core and when I checked in on it, I noticed that she had a strange bluish silver qi gathered there, it appeared to be a mixture of water and metal qi, but I’d never seen any qi that look like that before.

Taking all of the strange silvery blue qi, Keiko screamed as she poured it down the tunnel toward the Magma Goat, which was merely five feet from us at that point. Despite our usual rule, Keiko yelled out happily. “Let’s see how you like my Arctic qi!”

It turns out, he didn’t like it very much. The moment the Arctic qi struck him, the Magma Goat thundered to a stop and slid until it bumped into my Inferno qi shield, which seemed to help it, rather than hurt it, so I let it fade. Not only did the Arctic qi seem to be hurting the Magma Goat, it also seemed to be solidifying it into a solid piece of rock, rather than a flowing beast of magma. I pushed every bit of metal and water qi I had in my lower core toward Keiko and she converted into Arctic qi just as fast as I could push it to her. It seemed like the Magma Goat was trying to open his mouth to unleash some sort of attack towards us, but when it did so Keiko filled his mouth full of Arctic qi. It seemed to freeze even more rapidly from the inside than it did when hitting the its exterior. Ten seconds of constant Arctic qi from Keiko later and all that was left of the Magma Goat was a pile of rubble and a glowing orange core.

She jumped up and wrapped her arms and legs around me, give me a big kiss before leaning back to smile. “I did it! I found my qi combination!”

I held her securely against my waist and looked at her curiously. “What was your epiphany? What helped you combine water and metal qi to create Arctic qi?”

She grinned sheepishly, “Actually, I think I’ve been making it for almost a week now.” Seeing the look of confusion on my face, she continued. “It’s only been while I was holding the egg. After holding onto it for the last three weeks, I started to feel some kind of bond with it and could almost feel it gently guiding me into using my water qi with metal qi, instead of wind qi, to cool it down. About a week ago, I noticed that it was taking less and less energy to keep the egg cold and I was just glad that I wasn’t burning to qi so quickly, so I didn’t look a gift horse in the mouth and just enjoyed the reduction in qi usage.

“I probably should’ve thought about it more, but it didn’t feel that important. I was just combining metal and water qi together and when I tried it on things other than the egg, I did didn’t feel the reduction in qi usage, so I assumed that it was just the egg helping me along.” She knuckled the side of her head softly. “Sorry about that, I was so jealous of you and your Inferno qi that I didn’t think to search deep within myself for the answer, instead I was just trying to find a fast way.”

I hugged her tightly and squeezed her until I felt a vertebra or two pop in her back. I spoke directly into her long beautiful hair. “I’m just glad we’re able to be here together, safe-ish.”

We stood like that for a while before Keiko eventually asked me to let her down so that she could go look after the egg. As we sat around the fire, I looked at the core we had retrieved from the rubble of the Magma Goat. “This thing has to be a beast core, right? I wonder what grade it is?”

Keiko looked at me curiously, “You don’t know? It’s earth grade fire core. I guess you never really had any chance to see them back in Roh city. I know my father dealt in a, not-so-small number of cores, and one like that was one of the best ones I ever saw him with. It could likely be forged into some sort of fire qi attributed weapon of some sort. Either that, or it could be used to power an airship for a little while.”

I nodded thoughtfully, “That’s good,” I looked over toward where the pile of rubble used to be, “but I wonder if the other parts of the Magma Goat are going to be worth anything? It felt like a waste to not take them, so I hope they’re good for something.”

“I would think so, a beast of its level is almost always going to have some sort of material on it that’s worth something. At the very least, its horns are probably tough enough that we could turn them into a pair of curved daggers for you to use defensively, or better than that, what if we could turn them into a set of slightly curved tonfas? I know you liked them when we were training with them.”

I nodded softly, “That might be nice, I remember how right they felt. Tonfas aren’t meant for striking, instead they’re meant for deflecting so that you can get in a good blow later. That’s more my style than the all-out offensive style daggers would lend themselves to.”

I watched as Keiko threaded Arctic qi around the egg as she hugged it tight. “I can’t wait for this little one to come out in the world.” She looked at the egg lovingly. “I already feel such a strong bond with her, somehow it feels like she’s already out here, but she’s still trapped inside his egg.”

I looked at her curiously, “Her? Are you sure? It could be a boy, or some kind of creature without gender, how do you know it’s a girl?”

She just shrugged, “I just do. I wonder what she’s going to be? For some reason I don’t think she’s some kind of bird and a mammal wouldn’t lay an egg like this, so what else does that leave?”

I didn’t have a good answer for her, from everything I’d read, the mountains were primarily dominated by things like the Rocky Sabercat and the Blizzard Raven. Very few other things survived here. Of course, there were other variations of beast and bird monsters, but none of them fit the bill for the egg, so what it could be was a mystery.

An old story my grandfather told me as a child suddenly came to mind. It was a story about a young woman who was traveling on her own following her advancement to the level of Spirit Knight. She was wandering through the mountains closest to Roh city when she came across a white and blue snake with silver wings. Rather than fight with her, instead it protected her from other monsters in the area and eventually the two became friends. At first, they couldn’t communicate as the winged snake wasn’t able to speak. However, after spending time together, the woman bonded with the snake and found out that it was actually called an Arctic Coatl.

After bonding, it told her about how it was among the last of its kind and how it was always being hunted for the abilities it had. Beast Tamers and Royals alike sought after it for the miraculous healing properties of its venom. Rather than being harmful, its venom instead healed both wounds and corruption through the use of some special incredibly cold qi.

Thinking about it, there was a sort of silvery blue pattern that looked almost like wings on the egg that Keiko was holding. I nearly fell off the rock I was sitting on when the realization struck me. That’s what was in the egg, an Arctic Coatl! We were so lucky, but also mildly cursed, because once that little girl grew up, she was going to be one of the most sought-after creatures in the world.

Keiko looked at me strangely, “What’s up with you? Why’d you fall off your rock? Are you tired?” She teased me with a grin on her face.

I laughed and shook my head, “I think I figured out what our little friend is.” I pointed at the egg.

Her eyes grew wide and she stared at me intently. “How’s that? It doesn’t match anything Roderigo or Melody told us about. Is it something you learned in the library without me? I know you liked that place.”

I laughed and shook my head, “No, I didn’t go to the library without you … okay, yes I did.” She glared at me, but I continued. “Okay, I did go there without you, but I didn’t learn about what she was there. I learned about it from a story my grandfather told me as a child.”

Keiko waved her hands for me to continue and I told her the story that I had heard from my grandfather so many years ago. At first, she seemed skeptical, but as I continued the story, she grew less skeptical and more excited. Even when I got to the part about them being hunted nearly to extinction, her excitement didn’t wane very much.

I looked at her sternly, “Why do you look so chipper? We’re going to have to protect her for her entire life. We’re going to be hunted because of her forever. Are you sure you’re okay with that?”

As far as I was concerned, I was fine with it. It wasn’t like I wasn’t used to being hunted for something I didn’t do. More than a few times I had someone yelling after me in the market for stealing something, though I never did steal anything. This would be like that, but on a much bigger scale.

Keiko laughed me off. “There’s nothing that anyone could do that would make me allow harm to come to this little one.” She hugged the egg tightly and pushed even more Arctic qi around it. As she did so I noticed that the egg shook violently from side to side, as if it was happy for the additional cold. “She’s going to be part of our family, the first addition to our family since we became a couple. That’s it, she’ll be with us as long as we’re alive and I’m okay with that. Are you?”

I laughed and walked over to hug both Keiko and the egg. “For you, I’d do anything. It also just so happens that the idea of bringing a species back from the brink of extinction sounds like a both a noble cause and something that I feel I’m supposed to do.”

Keiko used her Arctic qi to cool down the entire end of the cave before she and I warmed up our little portion of it together.

Two days later, we ran into something Roderigo and Melody called Earth Rats. We were walking along a mountainside when we stepped forward and fell twenty feet down into a pit full of them. They head dug out all but the top layer of stone in an attempt to make a trap to trap a trap to capture food. We were a rude awakening for them, as Keiko and I destroyed them completely using our Arctic qi and Inferno qi respectively. After our tiny genocide was done, we noticed that there were forty-five small glowing brown stones that Keiko identified as basic earth cores, so we collected them all. There wasn’t enough left of the Earth Rats to do anything with the bodies, or in my case there weren’t any bodies, so we left the remains behind and continued on our course.

We traveled for the rest the day and I actually ended up having to carve out a small cave for Keiko and I to sleep that night. I only went about seven feet deep and instead of worrying about being exposed to the elements, I used the stone that I had carved out to build a wall that I solidified with earth qi, leaving about six inches at the top for air to breathe. I thought about going deeper, but Keiko stopped me. She said that it was a waste of energy to dig out more than this for a place we wouldn’t spend more than a single night in.

The next day, I felt a little bit lightheaded when I woke up and when I looked up toward the air vent I had created, I noticed that there was the butt of a large bird sitting covering most of the opening. I gently shook Keiko awake and pointed up at the offending bird butt and before I could do anything else, Keiko blasted a spear of Arctic qi straight at the posterior of said bird. I sighed and kicked the wall of stone that I created, while channeling earth qi into my foot. I shattered the bonds I had created the night before and watched as the stone wall shattered.

Lying in the rubble was the largest, fattest, Thunder Chicken I had ever seen. When I checked to see if it was still alive, it was definitely dead.

I thought Keiko had overdone it a bit, but when I asked her about it, she told me that she had intended to kill whatever was blocking our air.

I took an hour or so and plucked the thunder chicken before breaking it down and storing it away in our food storage. I was excited to cook with it, I knew that the larger a Thunder Chicken got, the more intense the wind qi contained inside became. Tonight’s dinner was going to be exceptional. I considered busting out my good spices.

Dinner that night was indeed glorious and after dinner and our post-meal cultivation session, Keiko and I both felt a shift and were surprised when we saw that we were merely a step away from advancing to become Brain cultivators.

Keiko and I laid together on the Centering Lotus with the Arctic Coatl egg between her feet. We cuddled together and chatted about what we both felt.

“Steven, I can’t believe we’re advancing so quickly. I think the qi density here might be even higher than it is in the Inheritance of the lovers! What do you think?”

She snuggled into my chest and I kissed the top of her head, “I think you’re right, with the Centering Lotus gathering all of the ambient qi in the air for us to cultivate, our progress is astronomically faster than I could have ever hoped for. If we keep advancing at this rate, we’ll be Brain cultivators by the end of next week.”

I was a bit torn about how fast our progress was. Despite the fact that I knew that it was silly to feel like we were cheating, it really did feel like that. It takes years for most people to go from becoming Body cultivators to advancing to the level of Heart cultivation. It took us less than six months. It takes cultivators five plus years to go from Heart to Meridian level, and we did that in less than a month of intense training. At the rate we were going, we would become Brain cultivators soon and it would have only taken us two months and change to do so.

When I brought up my concerns to Keiko, she brushed it off as me being silly. She explained that some people have so much money that they can purchase pills, techniques, and time in sacred lands full of qi while we had each other, a great cultivation technique, and we had actually found some places that will be considered sacred lands for their qi density. She said that it was hubris to think that we should be operating like normal people, when we weren’t.

When I thought about it again, I remembered one of the last few things my grandfather told me. He mentioned that becoming a Brain cultivator was relatively easy, most people do it before they die. It was the jump from Brain cultivator to that of Saint that marks someone as being truly talented. That change usually took upwards of two to three years, even for the most talented of people, so as long as we didn’t speed past that in a couple of months, I guess I could be okay with how fast we were advancing.

Two days later, we saw the first signs of the Sunrise tribe. It wasn’t much, just a small sun shaped pictogram on a mountain wall emblazoned on the side of the mountain. It was about one foot by one foot made of golden metal that was obviously formed from qi in the shape of a stylized son. We took that as a sign and followed that side of the split path and we were rewarded for doing so.

As we advanced along the path, we saw more and more signs of the lost civilization. We saw things like small clay pots and the occasional broken or discarded tool. Around dusk, we found a large cave that was strangely uninhabited by any monsters. When we passed through the entrance, the egg shook violently in Keiko’s arms, but after a second or two, it calmed down. When I inspected the qi in the area, I found that there was a pretty intense ward placed on the entrance to this cave complex. It appeared that the Sunrise Tribe probably used this cavern as a waypoint for their hunters who went out into the field. We found a skinning station along with a smoking station in the front area of the cave complex.

We had gone about fifty feet into the cave complex when we found a chamber that appeared to have been used as a bedroom for at least two people. There was a large stone shelf that appeared like it could house our Centering Lotus, so we set up for the night. Before I could start cooking dinner, I heard a sharp cracking noise coming from behind me. I spun around and saw Keiko staring down at the egg in delight.

A small spiderweb of cracks had formed near the top of the egg, it was almost time for our little girl to join the world!

As Keiko and I watched, the spiderweb of cracks grew larger until it covered the entire top portion of the egg. It seemed that the cracks were following the feather patterns of the egg quite closely, almost like they were there to make it easier for the creature to break out when it was ready to hatch. After about two minutes, and one particularly violent shake, we saw the tip of a bluish silver snout poke out of a tiny hole in the top of the egg.

Keiko did her best to encourage the baby, “You can do it little one, don’t give up. Fight on!”

As if responding to her voice, the small scaled snout slammed into the opening they had created and with a particularly violent thrash shattered the top of the egg, revealing the gorgeous creature within. Lying exhausted at the bottom of the eggshell was a bluish silver serpent with gorgeous silver wings plastered along its sides. From the tip of their tail sprouted a fan of feathers that were a match to the feathers of their wings. As we watched the creature looked up at us from inside the bottom of the egg that was its home. It looked first at Keiko and then at me before letting out the cutest *mew* I had ever heard. She sounded just like a cat and yes, I do mean she, because with that *mew* I felt a connection form with her.

I could tell that it was formed with both Keiko and I, but with our lower cores being connected, the bond redoubled and an even more powerful bond than normal was formed with both of us, rather than just one person like usual.

Keiko reached into the eggshell and gingerly picked her up before cradling her in her arms. I gingerly embraced Keiko and the new member of our family, being careful not to crush the newborn. We both looked down at her with loving eyes before Keiko started to tear up.

She muttered quietly, even though we were the only ones there, “We’re going to call you Eleanor, Ellie for short.” Ellie trilled excitedly before laying her head against Keiko contentedly.

We both laughed before I spoke up. “It looks like she likes it, nice job with the name.” I gave her a peck on the cheek. “Do you think she’ll need to be kept as cold as she did while she was in her egg? Keeping up that level of cold for something much bigger than her is going to be quite difficult.”

Keiko shook her head, “No, she’s producing enough Arctic qi of her own to keep her plenty cold for longer than I could probably do it. It’s a part of her, so it must come easily.”

After a few minutes of fawning over Ellie, I went back to getting dinner ready, but this time I made sure to include extra ingredients that were full of metal and water qi for our new addition. I knew Keiko would appreciate it as well, because she had been using a ton of Arctic qi and it was difficult to pull all of the component qi she needed from the air, especially considering how dry it was in the mountains.

Dinner passed without incident and both Keiko and Ellie really enjoyed their meals. For Ellie, I created a fine textured Iron Crab moose with Aqua Vitae for the thinner and some diced up Iron Fennel seeds. I portioned it out into small balls, no bigger than a large grape, about one inch in diameter. I gave her half of what I prepared for her, thinking I could get away with prepping for breakfast early, but when she finished, she looked at me expectantly and trilled in annoyance that she was out of food. I gave her the rest of what I had prepared for her and after she ate that, she lied down contentedly beside Keiko and I before falling asleep.

Keiko enjoyed her meal quite a bit as well, though she and Ellie had very similar meals, hers was solid and seared while Ellie’s was nearly liquid. After dinner, Keiko and I cultivated on the Centering Lotus like normal while we thought Ellie was sleeping. When we finally open our eyes, post cultivation, we looked down and saw that Ellie had wormed her way in between us and I got the impression that she might’ve been benefiting from the qi passing between us just like we were, though possibly to a lesser extent. When she noticed that we were looking at her she trilled happily before crawling into a coil and going back to sleep.

“She must’ve felt the qi passing between us,” I laughed as Keiko and I sparred, “that’s the only explanation as to why she would’ve woken up after eating that much.” I neatly dodged a knife hand from Keiko by leaning back at just the correct time, I felt the wind from the force of her blow as it swept past my neck.

“I think you’re right, I almost think that there’s some kind of connection between her and our cores, because I can tell when she she’s low on qi.”

She drove another knife hand toward my left side, which I deflected handily with a backhanded palm strike.

She huffed, “It’s almost like she’s siphoning off bits of qi from our cultivation. I wonder if that’s going to be good for her? We’re not just pushing back and forth water and metal qi, let alone Arctic qi, so I genuinely wonder if it’s good for her.” She hesitated for a moment before continuing. “I also wonder if it’s going to be detrimental to our cultivation, because if she’s pulling qi that we could be pushing back and forth wouldn’t that slow us down?” She looked so embarrassed that she closed her eyes and looked away, which earned her a roundhouse kick to the posterior, sending her tumbling toward the sleeping form of Ellie.

I dashed over and caught her before she landed on the little Arctic Coatl before helping her to the ground where she nursed her posterior by leaning on her hip.

I chuckled, “I got you good that time!” She did not look amused. “Oh, don’t be like that, I thought about how it felt during our cultivation and I didn’t feel a change, but it’s obvious that Ellie took in some qi from us. I wonder if she’s just gathering the little bits of qi that we aren’t able to regain? Maybe something like the impurities that we’re expelling by refining our qi.” I rubbed my chin for a moment while thinking. “Yeah, I think that’s it. Orbital Breathing isn’t just about passing qi back and forth, it’s about stripping out the impurities in the qi and letting them back into the world. Doing so leaves us with more pure qi, which is better for our cultivation and putting the unrefined qi back out into the world replenishes it. I think Ellie is feeding off of that impure qi! Seeing as she’s a magical beast, that’s probably what she’s supposed to be eating, but probably at a much slower pace.”

Keiko punched me in the arm, “You didn’t have to take advantage of my worry to kick me, jerk … I think you’re right though, about Ellie at least. I think that she’s probably just siphoning off our qi discharge, rather than actually siphoning off the qi that we’re passing back and forth.” She grinned when she saw me rubbing my arm. “Oh, getting hit hurts?” She pointed to her posterior. “I wouldn’t know.”

After a few tense moments of staring at each other, we both started laughing and we continued to enjoy each other’s company and the conversations that came of that, for the rest of the night in the little room that we had found.

The next day, Keiko, Ellie, and I explored the rest of the cave system and found something curious. We found the remnants of a cook fire in one of the rearmost rooms of the complex, but it appeared that the firewood was no more than two or three days old, because the ash on it hadn’t fully solidified yet. Keiko and I agreed that we would keep an eye out for any other signs of living inhabitants, because this evidence pointed to there being some other person alive in this region and due to it being hidden in a deep room of the complex, Keiko and I didn’t think that it was from the Indus Tribe. More likely, it was from one of the survivors of the Moonrise or Sunrise Tribes.

Throughout that day of exploring the complex, Ellie tried to fly a few times, but her wings weren’t able to support her yet. She was able to get a couple inches off the ground before fluttering back down and hissing in annoyance. Keiko and I both tried, in our own ways, to help her learn to fly, but we eventually figured out that it was just the fact that she needed to strengthen up before her wings would be able to carry her. Instead, she slid around behind us sometimes, other times it was in front of us, and a lot of times it was her wrapped around either Keiko’s arm or around the crown of my head. I guess she liked how high up it was, because over time that became her favorite spot, which made Keiko insanely jealous.

She pouted. “I carried her egg for over a month and now Ellie spends all her time with you … traitor!” She huffed and stomped away leaving Ellie and I confused behind her.

We followed her into an area of the complex that we hadn’t been to yet, what we were hoping would be one of the last few. Inside it was a massive mural that must’ve been every bit of three hundred feet across. It wrapped all around the walls of the chamber.

I whistled appreciatively, “Wow, now that’s a mural. I wonder what it’s about?” I looked over toward where Keiko was standing by the leftmost section of the mural before moving over to follow her.

She was staring intently at the mural, but when I got closer, I noticed that it was very dull looking and there wasn’t a lot of detail to it. I was very disappointed.

I sighed, “Well that’s annoying, I was hoping for something fantastic considering how big this thing was.”

On my head, Ellie just bobbed along without too much thought.

Keiko shook her head, “Something feels off, I’m not sure what it is, but there’s too much of this mural for it to be so simple.” I saw her create a small ball of fire qi and hold it up towards the mural, but nothing happened. The same thing happened with each other type of qi she could use, including Arctic qi. When that didn’t work, she looked at me expectantly.

I sighed, “Fine, I’ll try out my Inferno qi.” I generated a fist sized ball of Inferno qi my hand and when it got within three feet of the mural, the entire thing lit up like the festival of lights back in Roh City on the biggest holiday of the year. The mural was now intensely detailed and vibrant. It was full of golds and reds. along with blues, greens, and every other color imaginable.

The mural went from being muted and completely illegible, to being the most vibrant piece of artwork I had ever seen in my life. I was struck by how alive it felt, no piece of any kind of art had ever moved me the way it did. From the section of mural that Keiko and I were standing by, which showed a small group of people going about their normal lives, until the next section a few feet down which showed that group of people discovering how to harness qi. It was breathtaking and I couldn’t wait to explore more of the wonders that were in store for me.

The next section showed people experimenting with qi, but it wasn’t until about twenty feet down that I saw the first instance of Inferno qi, as I knew it. The person that was depicted as using Inferno qi appeared to be just some farm boy, but just a foot down the mural there was an image of him being crowned as some sort of important person, complete with a headdress that look like the sun.

At that point, when I looked more closely, I noticed that wherever the mural was, the walls actually bowed out slightly to turn the room into a perfect circle. I wasn’t sure how I had missed it happening, but I blamed it on the magnificent artwork that both Keiko and I were taking in.

I tapped Keiko on the shoulder and she slowly turned to face me with tears rolling down her face. “What do you need? I’m just taking in this masterwork, lost to the ages.”

I smiled, “I was doing the same thing when I noticed that the walls in here went from being four square walls to being one continuous circle.” Keiko turned around and looked at the wall before turning back to me and nodding. “The people who lived here were masters of qi, for it to be so smooth that we didn’t even notice the walls shifting. What must they had been like in their prime?” I shook my head in amazement.

As I pondered, Keiko turned back to stare at the mural, I couldn’t get that idea out of my head. Anyone who is powerful enough to create a mural this detailed and this fantastic must of been at least a Duke cultivator, maybe even an Emperor. What could have been strong enough to wipe out this entire civilization in it’s prime?

I shook my head; it was no time to consider that when I hadn’t even gotten to the end of the mural. There was every chance that the mural would answer those questions for me.

The next section showed the person I started referring to as Chief, meeting with a person wearing a similar headdress, but instead of being sun themed it was moon themed. It showed how the two of them were at first enemies, battling over the course of thirty or forty feet worth of mural, before eventually becoming friends and having their people come together as allies for festivals and other things. The next hundred feet of mural or so were exactly that, depictions of what I could only assume to be the Sunrise and Moonrise clans coexisting and thriving together. However, all that changed in the final hundred feet of the mural.

However, that last stretch of wall depicted newcomers coming to the island. At first, it showed the Sunrise and Moonrise clans being very hospitable to them, but in each scene like that it showed the newcomers being greedy and asking for more. In the last fifty feet or so of the mural it showed the newcomers with their chieftain, who wore a headdress that looked like it was made out of bones, moving to what I could only assume to be the Sunrise capital and leveling it, despite the Sunrise Chief’s attempts to stop him.

The last image of the mural showed what I could only assume to be the Indus tribe chieftain putting his foot on the chest of the Sunrise clan’s chief, while that sunrise chief held out his hand toward the end of the mural.

When I looked more closely at the sunrise chief’s hand, I noticed something strange. There were indentations that matched the earrings that Keiko and I wore. When I touched the indentations with my fingers, I felt the earrings tremble on my ears and I heard a grinding noise from behind me. I turned to face the center of the room and noticed that Keiko had done the same from her position about halfway along the mural. There was a spiral staircase leading down into the darkness and as we watched the walls of the staircase lit up with even more mural.

I looked over to Keiko and she just shrugged, I guessed that it was up to me at that point. I figured that if I’d gone this far, I might as well go all the way, so I waited for Keiko to speedily finish looking at the rest the mural before we went down this spiral staircase, hand-in-hand. Ellie seemed to want to get in on the handholding, so she slid down and wrapped herself around our hands to finish the family handhold. Keiko and I both laughed at her antics, which made her trill excitedly. Sometimes, I wasn’t sure if she just wanted our attention, or if she actually understood that we were happy with her. Either way, it was adorable.

As we slowly wound our way down the staircase, the mural got less and less intricate, but it felt like it was more important for some reason. There was a sort of urgency to the way things were carved and painted that were lacking in the above mural. The mural showed the remainder of the sunrise clan going into hiding. They went into what appeared to be the hunters rest that we were currently in and dug what appeared to be the staircase we were standing on. We wound down for what felt like forever, but was probably something closer to two thousand feet. At the bottom of the staircase, there was a small room, no more than five feet on a side, that extended out from the end of the staircase.

Inside that room were two things: The first was a large bronze door with a picture of the original Sunrise chieftain depicted on it in gold, which was probably formed with metal qi. The second thing was a long rod with grips at both ends. It appeared to be made for two people to hold with two hands each and it was laying diagonally in the room with just a foot or so to spare in the corners.

I quirked an eyebrow at Keiko and it was like she read my mind, which I guess she had at that point, but this wasn’t that. Both of us walked over to the ends of the rod and picked them up by the grips. Strangely enough, when I was holding the rod, it felt like there was more to it than just something large that probably wouldn’t fit down the spiral staircase. Keiko and I exchanged a glance and together we tried to push the ends of the rod closer. Both of us gasped as small needles punctured each of our hands, though we gasped in surprise more than pain. We watched as the blobs of blood the jabbing needles had taken from us traveled down the rod toward a hemispherical piece of crystal that we hadn’t noticed in the center of it.

When the blood reached the center crystal from both sides the blood droplets spun together like nothing I had ever seen before and after a few moments the ends of the rods started retracting in toward the crystal. I couldn’t release the rod if I wanted to, there was some force drawing me closer to the center, where I noticed Keiko was being pulled as well. Ellie hissed angrily, but was unable to even touch the rod, so she called back around my head and glared down at the rod.

The second the grips that Keiko and I were holding touched the center crystal, the whirling blood droplets burst into the colors of qi that I recognized, orange for fire, blue for water, yellow for metal, brown for earth, green for wood, and silver for wind, but there were also white and black splotches that eventually solidified into their own one eighth sections.

When that happened, we heard a soft clicking sound and when we inspected the door, we noticed that it was ever so slightly ajar. The rod that Keiko and I were holding started to go back to his regular size and I got the impression that when it finished growing the door would re-lock itself. I wasn’t sure where I got that idea came from, but I wasn’t going to test it out. I gently set down the rod and encouraged Keiko to do the same before taking her hand and hurrying through the large bronze doorway. Little did I know that what I found behind that door would fundamentally change the course of the rest of my life.

Chapter 13

As we stepped through the large bronze door, it slammed shut behind us with an audible clang. Keiko and I looked around and found ourselves in a very long, slightly downward sloping, tunnel.

Keiko bumped me on the shoulder with her knuckles. “Well, it looks like we’re down here. The only way out is through, right?” She grinned sheepishly and when I shook my head, I noticed that the walls were faintly glowing. However, instead of murals this time it was some sort of script I couldn’t read.

I grinned back at Keiko while pointing toward the inscriptions on the walls. “At least we have light … I guess that’s good?” I scratched the back of my head anxiously. “Sorry about this, we shouldn’t have come into this half-cocked like we did. It’s my fault, I’m usually the one who comes up with the big plans.”

Keiko punched me in the arm, really hard that time. I let out a hiss in pain as she growled at me. “Don’t you ever, and I mean ever, think that I’m going to go with a plan of yours that I don’t agree with. I promise you, if you hadn’t said ‘let’s go down the scary hole’, I was going down the scary tell. If nothing else, we’re on an adventure together, and isn’t that what we asked for when we left the Inheritance of the Lovers?” She leaned in and hugged me tight. Ellie decided that would be a good time to slither over to curl around Keiko’s shoulders instead of resting on my head.

I laughed, “You’re right, it was crazy to think that I was in charge here. It won’t happen again.”

“Oh no, you’re definitely in charge, don’t misunderstand that. However, even if you’re in charge, I’m still going to be keeping you in check.” She stood on her tiptoes and gave me a kiss on the lips before turning left to look down the tunnel. “Nothing to it but to do it, right?” With that, she strode off down the tunnel and I extended my stride to keep up.

It was on the third day of walking through this tunnel that Keiko and I broke through to become Brain cultivators. The qi down here was even more intense than it was up in the mountains, which I wasn’t even sure was possible until experiencing it for myself. After our post-breakthrough cultivation session, we were at the peak of the low stage of Brain cultivation. The fact that we didn’t get farther was to be expected. As the levels of cultivation went up, the complexities of advancing them did as well.

As we walked, I explored using qi threads like I had seen Jim do in the tournament. I was only able to keep two or three of them active at a time, but I was confident that given enough training, I should be able to have at least five or six, if not more active at one time. Keiko tried doing the same, but she was stuck at two qi threads that were functional and got discouraged. Instead, she focused on mastering the art of creating Arctic qi from nothing as quickly as she could, like I had with Inferno qi the week before.

We continued that way for four more days, before coming to another door just like the one we had entered the tunnel through. It looked like it was closed, but the door handle was on our side, so I reached forward to open the door after exchanging a glance with Keiko. Light flooded the tunnel when I opened the door. The door opened up into what appeared to be a small market, where a few people were trading goods and going about their days. When the bronze door opened all the way, it clanged against the rock behind it and everyone stopped what they were doing, some of them going so far as to drop whatever they were holding, to turn to face us.

It was as if a powerful cultivator had showed up and told everyone to run for the lives, because that’s what they did. Every single person in that market ran as if an Emperor level beast was chasing them and the only way to survive was to outrun their neighbors. I looked up and saw that we were in what appeared to be a mountain, but the top of it was missing and there were houses all along the bottom of the carved-out inside. When I listened closely, I heard what sounded like water sloshing, but it was so much louder than any water sloshing I’d ever heard.

Keiko whispered in my ear, “I think I can hear the ocean; it sounds like the tide slapping against the rocks.” When I shrugged, she explained. “I remember what it sounds like from stories my mother told me when I was young.”

Make sure her mom was alive when she was a kid, I will not sure if I made her die in childbirth or not.

I nodded my head appreciatively, “That explains why we were walking for so long. We had to walk all the way from the somewhere in the mountain region to the outer edge, if that is indeed the ocean. It could also be a lake or something.”

As we discussed the distance we had traveled and the odds that we were actually along the outer edge of the island, we heard the sounds of footsteps marching in unison coming toward us from the opposite side of the market. There were no fewer than ten people rushing to meet us in the market square. I reached out and checked the cultivation of the men and women arrayed against us and was surprised. Not a single one was below the level of Meridian cultivator and at least one of them was a Brain cultivator. Finally, the woman in charge was definitely a Sage cultivator.

I raised my arms trying to indicate that I wasn’t threatening and Keiko did the same. “We mean you no harm, we were searching for the remainders of the Sunrise clan. Have we come to the right place?”

Of the people arrayed against us, only the Sage looked nonplussed at our assertion of being nonthreatening.

She strode forward, “What brings you to some home?” She spoke very deliberately, like every word she said mattered and that if she were to speak too quickly it would be wasted. This woman was small, barely five and a half feet tall, but she was more muscular than most people I had ever met. Her build reminded me a lot of Keiko’s, though she didn’t appear to have disdained quick attacks like Keiko did. I got the impression that if she wanted to, she could have killed both of us with a wave of her hand. I needed to remain as cordial as possible.

I gulped, “We come seeking knowledge, we also come to see if we can help them deal with the threat of the Indus tribe.”

That got the rest of them riled up, some of them were beating their chests angrily and looked like they wanted to stab me where I stood before the Sage raised her hand to quiet them.

She smiled, “Any enemy of the Indus tribe are friends of ours.” She turned to look at the nine men and women arrayed behind her. “Prepare the traditional guest of honor feast, it’s about time that we reentered the world.”

Keiko bumped her shoulder against my side while sending me a mental message. “How lucky are we? Not only do we get a feast, but the people we came looking for are still around.”

She wasn’t wrong, we had come searching for a few refugees, maybe a small family of survivors, but instead we ended up finding what appeared to be at least a town, if not something more akin to a small city. I was going to be able to ask them about how Inferno qi differed from the standard mixture of fire and wind qi. That alone should’ve been enough to make me ecstatic, but something about the way the leader of the guards said ‘rejoin the world’ made me rethink that.

I replied to Keiko mentally, “You’re not wrong, let’s see how the hospitality is. We should avoid make any big plans though. I hope we don’t end up getting wrapped up in anything that’s too intense right now, we need to be focusing on our cultivation until we’re much stronger.”

The leader of the guards walked over and presented her hand for me to shake. Her voice was like a blade slicing through fruit, smooth yet robust. “Welcome to Sun’s End, you can call me Captain Solaria.” I reached out and pumped her hand, making her smile. “What can I call you two?” She reached out and shook Keiko’s hand as well.

Keiko seemed genuinely excited to meet someone who represented the kind of woman she wanted to be as a cultivator, so she was very forthcoming when asked for information. “I’m Keiko Roh, and this is Steven Roh. We’re from Roh City. Where are we? Steven and I were arguing about if we had actually walked all the way to the edge of the island or if we were just by some big lake. We had a small bet on it.”

I just barely stop myself from smacking myself on the forehead, but that was Keiko, she was bubbly and entirely too trusting when it came new people.

Captain Solaria laughed heartily, it sounded like a large bell being struck like the top, not too low pitched, but with tons of depth behind it. “You’ve got a good head for direction; we are indeed near the coast of the island.”

I snickered and Keiko huffed, but we allowed Captain Solaria to continue. “It appears that Steven won that bet, what were the stakes? That is, if you don’t mind me asking?”

Keiko grumbled under her breath, “More Blazing Elk for dinner, crap.”

I chuckled and tussled her hair, “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem, because the feast that the lovely Captain here mentioned won’t be prepared by me, so likely there won’t be any Blazing Elk. I do reserve the right to make it the next time we’re out and about though.” I grinned wolfishly, which turned Keiko’s rapidly forming smile into a grimace.

Captain Solaria shook her head while laughing again, “You’d be correct there, we don’t have access to any Blazing Elk on this part of the island anymore, the Indus tribe,” she spat, “hunted them to extinction two generations ago. We have approximately twenty pounds of Blazing Elk stored in a spatial storage device, but that’s something we only cook to welcome a new chieftain. Hopefully we won’t be needing that very soon, because our current chief’s only been in power for twenty years.”

She turned around and motioned for us to follow, which we did. There was no point in even considering attacking her, she could’ve eviscerated us in seconds if that’s what she wanted to do. It would take the condensed qi beam that Keiko and I used to win the tournament to even scratch her, and there was no guarantee that even that would be able to actually hurt her. At this point in time, our best bet was to fall in behind her and be as cooperative as possible while doing our best to learn as much as possible.

Ellie on the other hand, was doing her best to remain as still as possible. Keiko and I both got the impression that she was potentially retracting because of the amount of fire qi in the area, even though she had never had a problem with me using it near her before. Keiko actually shivered with the amount of Arctic qi that Ellie was pumping out, it must’ve been incredibly cold because Keiko started to spin up a bunch of fire qi inside her lower core to help combat the chill.

Captain Solaria walked half of a step in front of us and gave us the ‘silver piece tour’ as she called it. She swept her hand out to indicate the open area we were standing in. “This is the market, if you need to buy or sell anything this is where you want to be.” She pointed toward a slightly larger building with a smokestack coming out of the top of it that snaked all the way up the side of the mountain as well as a hammer and anvil etched into the stone of the building. “That’s the smithy, Old Ironbellows is a pretty decent smith. So, if you need weapons made, you can ask him.”

As we continued on, she pointed out a few more locations: the Weavers Guild, the shaman’s house, the martial arts training ground/fighting arena, and last but not least, the residential district. Of those places, the two most interesting to me were the martial arts training grounds and the residential district. The martial arts training ground was not unlike the one in Roh City, but it appeared that the walls were reinforced with much more intense qi than anything I’d ever seen in Roh City. I wondered if they had anyone powerful enough to make those still, or if they were just leftovers from a bygone era.

As for the residential district, I was fascinated by the architecture of their dwellings. Not only were their houses built into the cliff faces, but they were all identical, to a point. I could tell that there were four or five different tiers of housing. The first one was a single room; I saw a lot of those as we continued toward wherever we were going. Captain Solaria also pointed out two-room, four-room, and eight-room dwellings.

When I asked why there were no three-room dwellings, Captain Solaria shrugged. “Three is a sacred number, it is the number of cores in each person, and a number of segments we split our days into. To have buildings that had that number of rooms felt wrong to our predecessors, and now it is tradition.”

Keiko cocked her head to the side and asked Captain Solaria what she meant by three segments of the day.

Captain Solaria laughed and explained, “Eight hours of sleep, eight hours cultivation, and eight hours of personal interaction out in the world. It was passed down from times of old that to keep that balance is to strengthen oneself both in body, mind, soul, and cultivation. It has never led us wrong, so all of our people follow those tenants.”

When I thought about it, that’s pretty close to what Keiko and I were doing back at the Inheritance of the Lovers. We had eight hours of sleep, an hour of cultivation before and after breakfast, same with lunch and dinner, and finally four hours throughout the day outside of those times. The rest of our time was spent with Roderigo and Melody. I couldn’t help but wonder how they were doing without us… probably spending a lot of points on food!

Not letting that thought dragged me down, I asked the Captain a few more questions. “What makes Keiko and I are worthy of a visitors’ feast? We’re just your average Brain cultivators. We’re nothing special.” Okay, technically we were something special in that we were paired cultivators, but I didn’t feel like explaining that to her… yet. It was always a good idea to keep something in reserve when dealing with new people.

The petite Captain laughed out loud, “It’s the Feast of the Guest, not Feast of the Visitor. Next, you’re more than just guests. You two coming to that door was foretold nearly five thousand years ago by the original chief of the Sunrise tribe.”

When I opened my mouth to try and ask more questions about that, she waved me off. “I won’t be explaining any more myself, I’ll let the Crones do that.” She shivered at the mention of the Crones, which made me curious as to why that was the case, but I decided against asking, to avoid being perceived as rude.

Keiko however, had no such social graces and immediately asked about it. “Why did you shiver when you talked about the Crones? Are they scary?”

There were some days that I felt like she was almost there in becoming a normal person of society, then there were days like today that reminded me that I liked the fact that she wasn’t normal, because she asked that question with no strings attached. If I had asked the question, there would’ve been scorn in my tone that wouldn’t’ve gone over well with our newfound compatriot.

Captain Solaria shivered again involuntarily, “It’s okay.”

I spoke up immediately, “I’m so sorry for her, if you want to answer, please feel free to, but don’t feel obligated to do so.” A part of me wished she would answer anyway, but I felt it was prudent to least try and be diplomatic.

Captain Solaria chuckled and shook her head. “It’s no bother. The Crones are incredibly old, even though their cultivation bases shouldn’t allow them to be that old. I think the weakest one of them is a Meridian cultivator and she’s almost five hundred years old. Something’s not right with them, but they’re so useful that the tribe allows from to stay.” She shivered again involuntarily. “When one of them does die, we even go so far as to allow them to select a replacement from among a number of our young female cultivators. It is both considered a great honor and a great curse to be selected to work with them. Over time, they lose all semblance of their old appearance and just become another one of the Crones.”

Keiko blanched, “Oh, I don’t really want to meet them then. Can we not?”

Captain Solaria roared with laughter and turned to look back at us with a huge grin before shaking her head. “I’m sorry to say that you’re going to have to meet the Crones, there’s not much we can do considering they’re the ones who have the prophecy about you two. On the plus side, I know that we have Roc meat set aside for this very occasion, so you’ll be eating well tonight. It’s not Blazing Elk, but it should at least be tasty and full of qi.”

Keiko and I took a few moments to appreciate how good a mood Captain Solaria was in. It was nice running into a guard captain who wasn’t all serious, all the time. She was a far cry from the city guards I knew from Roh City, while they exuded a feeling of their position giving them their aura of importance and power, Captain Solaria gave me the impression that the title of guard captain was just that, a title for her. With her Sage level cultivation, there were very few people who could mess with her, and it showed. She radiated a primal feeling of power and confidence that was addictive.

I looked over at Keiko and saw that she was drinking in Captain Solaria’s aura, I couldn’t wait until she was able to radiate an aura like that, because I found it very attractive.

We continued on for a little bit longer as we wound our way higher up into the town, most of the time Captain Solaria was detailing how this is where so-and-so lived and that was what to do for a living. Honestly, it all kind of started the run together at a certain point. The people I cared about here were the guard captain, the chieftain, and the Crones. Anyone else would have to prove themselves as interesting for me to actually care about anything to do with them. I know that sounds rude, but when someone introduces you to a hundred and fifty names, they all start to flow together into an amalgamation of ‘blah’. When I checked on Keiko, she was even more out of it than I was.

Her eyes were totally glazed over and I could see that she was actually cultivating as she walked, that minx. She was trying to get a step on me, cultivating while I was listening to the captain. I sighed and shook my head softly, there was nothing I could do to break her out of it without alerting Captain Solaria, so I just grinned and nodded when she glanced back to look at me.

Eventually, we came to the largest building in the entire city, besides the martial arts training grounds of course. The dwelling/town hall was easily three stories tall and at first looked to be carved out of the raw mountainside just like all the other buildings in town. However, when I looked more closely, I saw that the walls were all subtly decorated with similar runes to the ones that Keiko and I had seen as we were walking in the tunnel leading to this place.

Captain Solaria didn’t even bother stopping at the front door, instead she brought us straight through to see the gathered group of people inside. There were five people present, one person was wearing the same headdress I’d seen the chief wearing in the mural we had left behind, so I took him to be the chief. The next three people were all wearing the same black robes, with the same cane, and their faces were shrouded behind heavy cloaks, which actually seemed kind of nice considering how cold it actually was here.

The final person was strange, he moved like a caged panther and when he saw me looking at him, he bared his teeth at me just like a big cat would have. I got the impression that he would be the one I had to watch out for most in this room, despite the fact that the chief obviously had more political power. I thought that panther man was probably the most physically dangerous here besides Captain Solaria.

The chief stood up from his chair as Captain Solaria led us into the audience chamber, because that’s what the entrance to the building appeared to be. He strode forward until he was merely ten feet from Keiko and I before bowing low and cupping his hands to us. Keiko gasped, but I did my best to not show my surprise, merely allowing a widening of the eyes and a slight intake of breath.

The chief straightened up and turned to address Captain Solaria. “Thank you very much for bringing these two to see us. Captain, will you be staying with us, or are you required elsewhere?” I could tell from the way he spoke to the Captain that he held her in high esteem, there was also an almost familial sense to how he addressed her, even though there were no words that would’ve given me that impression. I chalked it up to the fact that he didn’t immediately dismiss her, though it might have to do with the fact that she smiled at him like one only does to a family member, or family friend, who you get along with well.

Captain Solaria stood up straight before inclining her head slightly. “Yes chief, I plan to stay with this pair for the entirety of their stay here. It wouldn’t do for them to get lost and we both know that I know this city better than anyone. Is that all right with you?” She eyeballed the chief as if to say, ‘you and I both know you’re not gonna stop me from doing this, so you should just let me’.

The chief smiled wide and swept his arm to the side as if to say, ‘you’ve bested me’. “Of course, I would like nothing more than to make sure that our honored guests are as well taken care of as humanly possible. Who better to take care of them then our city’s Glorious Dawn?”

Solaria flinched at the mention of Glorious Dawn, which I took to mean that maybe it wasn’t the title she was comfortable with, despite her importance and apparent strength. Keiko looked at me after her gaze shot between the two people who were just speaking. She looked over at me and I nodded. It seemed that she picked up on the connection between the two just like I did. It was surprising that she didn’t send me a mental message, but I guess it’s not really something that we really had to use in the Inheritance of the lovers or at any time except when it was too cold in the caves to talk comfortably. Over time, we would need to practice using it more, because being able to have an entire conversation without someone else hearing you was an invaluable skill.

Captain Solaria merely nodded and went to stand by the door with her arms folded behind her back and her feet splayed slightly apart. Her face was a perfect mask of professionalism and duty, despite the fact that the chief was grinning at her like a child who got away with something.

When I took a closer look at the chief, he appeared to be of a similar age to Captain Solaria, though with her level of cultivation there was a chance that she could have been over a hundred years old still look just like that. When I took a moment to investigate his cultivation level, I was shocked to find that he was also a Sage level cultivator. There were a striking number of similarities between Captain Solaria and the chief, it let me to believe that they were related in some way, almost definitely by blood.

The chief smiled wide and turned to address Keiko and I. “Welcome, honored guests, I hope that our dear Captain Solaria has given you a brief tour of the city on the way here?”

I nodded while Keiko spoke up. “Yes, she did. Your city is beautiful, all of the carvings and people working together to accomplish things … it looks like a lovely place to live.” Sometimes she just knew exactly what to say, it was uncanny.

The chief’s smile widened even more as he chuckled. “I’m happy to hear that you find our little city to be charming, it does my heart well to know that people from the outside would feel that way about us despite … never mind that.” He turned to look at the three robed figures standing behind him before turning back to us with a grimace. “Before I let the Crones have you, I’d like to make sure that you know you can call me Cuzco, no need for formalities between us.”

Without waiting for an answer, he swept off to go and stand beside Panther Man, who was snarling toward Keiko and I. I really did wonder what was going on with him, was it something we did, or maybe was it how we smelled? I felt a fluctuation in Ellie’s qi and it dawned on me that Panther Man was probably growling at her, not Keiko and I. Some kind of hunter’s instinct that told him about our little girl. He would be one we would have to watch out for.

The central Crone walked up and poked me with a stick while her compatriots flanked Keiko and I. I could’ve stopped it, but for some reason I felt like it was a bad idea to do so. She chuckled and raised the stick up so that she could look at the end of it. When she lifted it up, I saw something strange on the tip. Rather than your standard brownish gray wooden tip, it appeared to be a disk of white stone, probably marble, that had the same eight color pattern that the crystal on the bar that opened the door to the tunnel that led Keiko and I to Sun’s End. When the central Crone showed the end of the stick toward her to compatriots, they all started to cackle in unison.

I shivered involuntarily and when I looked over to check on Keiko, she was doing the same. Something wasn’t right about those three, and it wasn’t something minor. Despite myself, I settled into a basic defensive stance and turned my body so that I could protect Keiko and Ellie more easily.

The central Crone barked out a laugh that sounded much younger and more feminine than I expected. She spoke with a voice that matched her laugh, but a tone that didn’t, instead it carried with it the weight of more years them were possible for a voice that young. “You have nothing to fear from us young Steven, nor your companion Keiko or your bonded beast, Eleanor. We only wish to deliver our prophecy to you, so that you can fulfill your role in the history of this clan and this island.”

I loosened my defensive stance, but didn’t fully come out of it. I was too wary of the fact that she knew not only my name and Keiko’s name, but also Ellie’s full name. I don’t think Keiko I had used her full name more than once or twice since she was born and both of those times were back in the caves of the mountains when she had eaten something she wasn’t supposed to, to get her to spit it out. These women were much more than they appeared and it was unnerving.

As I watched, the three Crones linked arms and huddled up around us until they were merely three feet from Keiko, Ellie, and I. Their eyes glowed bright purple as they started to chant, one word at a time, with every other word being spoken by the next Crone in line before looping back to the beginning.

“Five great solar cycles following the destruction of Solaris, a pair of lovers and the proof of their love will appear before the Children of the Sun. A week before their arrival, they will be preceded by the breaking of final Sunrise Crystal. These two lovers and their companion are the key to the survival of the Children of the Sun. Should they fail, the Children of the Sun will be devoured by both the Indus tribe and history itself. There will be no remnant of the Sunrise clan left.

“Despite them having no link to the Children of the Sun, they will stop at nothing to save us. However, if too much aid is given to them, they will fail, dooming the Children of the Sun to destruction. One half of the Twin Suns will be needed to guide them through to their destiny, though there is no guarantee of their survival.”

The Crones all raised their sticks up until the tips touched above Keiko’s and my heads before all speaking in unison, one final line. “The only way to prevent the destruction of the Children of the Sun is for the Indus tribe to be eclipsed!” With that last word the central Crone’s stick flared with a bright white light and when that light finally faded, each of the Crones were holding weapons out to Keiko and I.

The central Crone was holding a large saber, more than five feet long for Keiko to take. It was made of a bright white metal with a hilt that appeared to be wrapped with some sort of marine animal leather.

When Keiko reached out to receive the weapon, the central Crone spoke again. “This is the Dawnblade. Many of its properties have been lost to time, even to us. However, we do know that it is impossibly sharp and that it can cleave through both metal and stone as if they were merely flesh.” She waited until Keiko took the blade with a nod before continuing. “I hope that you use it to serve the Children of the Sun honorably.”

The central Crone backed up and retreated into her cloak so that no part of her was visible. The other two Crones each proffered to me what appeared to be a pair of jet black tonfas. They spoke in unison when I reached out to receive them. “These are collectively known as the Duskguard. They were created to be wielded by the defender of the Dawnblade’s wielder. They are impossibly tough and even a King level cultivator would not be able to strike through them, though your body would need to be strong enough to survive a strike like that for them to do any good. The rest of their properties are lost to time, as with the Dawnblade.”

When I took the tonfas and spun them experimentally, they just felt right in my hands. When I looked up to see where the two Crones had gone, I found that they were standing by their sister in the center of the room. They had retreated into their cloaks just like the central one did.

A few seconds after that, they spoke once more in unison. “Our duty to the Children of the Sun is now finished. We thank you for your help in maintaining our existence all these years and we hope that what we have done is enough to save you. The original chief of the Children of the Sun performed a great service for someone very important and we were the reward for that service. Our time here is at an end.”

The entire room went black for a few moments and when light eventually returned to the room, I saw that both Cusco and Captain Solaria had both drawn weapons that were reinforced with qi and were prepared for battle. He had a bright golden warhammer and she had a pair of golden daggers. However, it turned out to be unnecessary because, in the center of the room, rather than the three Crones there were three women of differing ages instead.

Gone were the cloaks and staves of the Crones. In their places were the forms of three nearly identical women of different ages clothed in beautiful white robes. One couldn’t have been any older than Keiko and I were, somewhere around eighteen years old. Another was older, she appeared to be around forty years old or so. Finally, the last woman was much older, she appeared to be nearly one hundred years old and she lay gasping for breath.

Panther Man, as I was not given another name for him that was what I called him, gasped and rushed over to the eldest woman in the center of the hall before taking her hand. He looked deep into her eyes and for the first time, appeared like a normal person rather than a wild beast. Keiko and I walked over to check on the other two women and when we did so I heard what he said to the eldest woman.

“It is nice to meet you Aunt Eunice. Your sisters are gone from this world, though their progeny remains. I will do my best to honor you in the way that my grandmother would’ve wanted.” The eldest woman, apparently named Eunice, cried until she had no tears left before passing out in the arms of Panther Man.

Both Captain Solaria and Chief Cusco rushed over to the youngest woman. Both of them murmuring about how they finally got back “Little Evelyn”. When I looked over, I saw both of them were weeping tears of joy and the young girl, apparently named Evelyn, was also crying and hugging them. They apparently cared for her great deal. I found out later that she was Cusco’s daughter and Solaria’s niece, which made Cusco and Solaria siblings.

Seeing as no one else went over to check on the central woman, the one who had been the speaker for the Crones, Keiko and I checked on her. She didn’t speak, though she looked around intelligently at the world. When she saw Keiko and I coming over to assist her, she indicated her throat and made motions as if to say that nothing was going to come out of her. After a small game of charades, we figured out that this woman was mute and that it was merely the magic of the Crones the gave her the ability to speak before. As of now, she was back to being unable to speak.

Little Ellie mewed softly to Keiko before slithering down around her arm toward the middle-aged woman. The woman who used to be the central Crone looked at the Arctic Coatl curiously before reaching out a hand to rub her head. Ellie let her rub her head for a moment before slithering up her arm until she could rest around the woman’s neck.

At first, she looked alarmed before Keiko and I explained that Ellie wasn’t going to hurt her. She smiled and nodded softly before petting Ellie again for a few moments. I felt through my connection to her that Ellie was spinning up an incredible amount of Arctic qi and I was worried about what she was going to do with it. I worried that she potentially saw this woman as a threat and that she was going to hurt her, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Ellie reached around and bit directly into the woman’s carotid artery, injecting her with an incredible amount of Arctic qi before Keiko or I could do anything. The woman screamed wordlessly, which came out more like a panicked moan than anything else, before slumping to the ground and being entirely covered in ice. The members of the Sunrise tribe in the room all reacted immediately and turned to face Keiko, Ellie, and I. Keiko and I turned around and stood defensively over Ellie and the former central Crone.

I held up my hands defensively as I spoke, “She’s an Arctic Coatl. Her venom has healing properties. I believe she’s trying to help her get her voice back.”

Captain Solaria and Chief Cuzco both scanned Keiko and I with their qi senses thoroughly for a few moments while Panther Man looked ready to tear both of our throats out, with his bare teeth if necessary. When they finished, they exchanged nods before putting their weapons away. Chief Cuzco put his hand on Panther Man’s shoulder and shook his head when panther my looked at him. “We have nothing to worry about, they speak the truth. Their bonded beast is attempting to heal the woman.”

Panther Man started to grumble, but Chief Cuzco cut him off. “Panthro, my old friend, trust me and my sister. Both of us sense no falsehood coming from our guests and from what we can tell, the woman seems to be breathing still. Have faith in them.”

The man I formally referred to as Panther Man, who I had just learned was actually called Panthro, growled at him and bared his teeth at Keiko and I, but he did sheathe a pair of short swords behind him in parallel sheathes before staring intently at the woman encased in ice before me.

I felt a sudden surge of need from Ellie, for some reason I knew that she needed more Arctic qi, she didn’t have enough to finish the job she started. I looked over frantically at Keiko, though I did my best to appear nonchalant, I knew that the other people in the room knew what I was doing. Keiko looked at me with panic on her face and hurriedly started producing as much Arctic qi as she could to feed to our little girl. I did my part by harvesting as much metal and water qi from the air as I could, before forcing every bit of it that I had my body toward her.

After nearly ten minutes of frantic Arctic qi generation and cryogenesis for the former Crone, the greenish blue ice shattered off of her, leaving her looking far healthier than she had before. Gone were the crow’s feet around her eyes and any wrinkles on her entire body. The woman gasped and I heard what sounded a little bit like a baby trying to talk to for the first time. I grinned and gave Ellie a big rub on the head, which had her trilling in excitement. She was proud of how well she had done; I could feel it through our bond. There was good reason for her to be excited, she was merely a couple of months old and she was already living up to her species role as healers.

Keiko was laying on her back next to me panting. It took everything she had to provide enough Arctic qi for Ellie to finish the healing of the former Crone. She barely avoided straining her qi channels and the meridians on her left hand, where she was touching Ellie, were totally ruptured. It would be quite a while before she was able to use qi with that hand effectively again. Though there was a good chance that Ellie would be able to help her with that once she recovered enough Arctic qi, but that was a thought for another time.

The former Crone, that was also formerly encased in a block of ice, sat up and looked at Keiko and I strangely before touching her face and her lips in shock.

Keiko sat up and smiled at her. “Ellie and I did our best to heal you. You should be able to speak now, though I don’t know how long you been mute, or if you were born that way.”

The woman’s voice croaked at first, but then resolved into a nice deep Alto, full of wonder. “I was in an accident as a young woman, I couldn’t have been any older than fourteen years old. The house my parents and I lived in was struck by a Smog Frog. It got in somehow and my father did his best to get it out with wind qi, but he was too late and it filled the entire house, which was just two rooms, with its toxic qi. Both my mother and father passed away almost immediately, but my father’s last act was to throw me as hard as he could out a nearby window in an effort to save my life.” She sighed and rubbed her temples as if remembering was hard for her. “I lived because of what my father did, but the smog I had inhaled completely destroyed my completely destroyed my ability to speak. The healers in town said that it was an issue with my voice box and that there was nothing they could do for me. Less than three months later the eldest Crone passed away and I was selected to fill her position.”

Chief Cuzco rubbed his head, as if he was ashamed, before speaking. “I was feeling awful that I didn’t know who you were, but it makes sense now. The last time we had a Smog Frog make its way into Sun’s End was over seventy years ago. I wasn’t even alive at that point and I’m willing to bet that our records from that time aren’t very good, seeing as my father didn’t feel it was necessary to keep written records.” He bowed deeply toward the former Crone who was now sitting up and hugging Keiko, who appeared to be enjoying it quite a bit.

The former Crone waved her hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about it Chief, there was no way you could have known who I was or where I came from. My family and I were very poor and we spent a lot of our time out scavenging for relics to sell, rather than working in the city. The only reason we are even able to afford the two-room house we lived in was because my grandfather left it to my father when he passed away. Neither my mother, nor my father, ever advanced past the Body stage of cultivation, so they had no way of resisting the Smog Frog.” She hugged Keiko tight once more before releasing her and standing up so she could bow down to Chief Cuzco. “My name is Althea Basalt and I am happy to say that as of today I will be working hard to be better than my parents were.”

Captain Solaria walked up and placed her hand on Althea’s shoulder firmly. “The city guard could use a strong cultivator like you, Althea. Do you recall how you cultivated to where you are now, or are you going to need some time to get comfortable with your cultivation base before finding work?”

Althea smiled and shook her head before grinning. “I remember everything from my time as a Crone. I mean mostly everything, I don’t remember the strange thoughts that whatever being was inside my body was thinking, but I remember everything she ever said or did in my body. She cultivated my body as well as she could, because she knew that the more powerful I was, the longer she could use my form. I know it’s going to be the same for the other two, though the eldest is likely near the end of her life either way. She was born without a Brain core, so advancing past the Meridian level of cultivation is impossible for her.”

I leaned down and helped Keiko up from the ground and patted off the dust she had gotten on her while lying on the ground. I gave her a hug and whispered into her hair, “You did great Sweetheart. You and Ellie make a great team.”

She snorted and hugged me even tighter. “You’re forgetting that without the massive amount of water and metal qi that you kept feeding to me, there would’ve been no way for me to provide Ellie with enough Arctic qi to keep her going. The three of us are a unit, don’t forget it. Our successes are for all three of us, same thing with our failures, should we ever have any.” She grinned as she pulled back so I could see her face. Stars above, I loved that woman.

I turned to see that Althea had been taken aside by Chief Cuzco and they were chatting about something I couldn’t hear over in the corner. While we were working, Panthro had taken his grandmother’s sister out of the chamber we were in and out into the city, where I assumed he was taking her to his dwelling so that he could take care of her. That left Keiko, Ellie, and I alone with Captain Solaria. It could’ve been worse; we could have been left with somebody we didn’t get along with here.

Captain Solaria shook her head, while rubbing her right temple, before sighing. “We’re not going to get anything else out of Cuzco tonight. He’s always been a huge history nerd, so having someone who can remember things from all the way back, seventy years ago, especially one who was able to see things through a Crone’s eyes, has him incredibly interested. He’ll be borderline useless for the next day or two, so we should probably head back to my house. You two will be staying with me. I assume that’s okay with you?” She quirked an eyebrow expectantly.

Keiko looked over me and I nodded back at her. She turned back to Captain Solaria and nodded. “That works for us. Though I thought someone mentioned some kind of feast to welcome us to Sun’s End? Is that postponed because of the thing with the Crones? Either way, I need to eat something soon, because I am starving.”

Captain Solaria laughed for a second before turning to yell at her brother. “Hey Cuzco, you forgot about the feast tonight! You’ll have to interrogate Althea later.” The Chief looked startled before his face fell into one of utter disappointment. He was truly appalled at what he had just heard. As his mouth hung open, I heard the sound of drums coming from behind me and down the stairs leading up to this place.

Captain Solaria pulled Keiko and I back towards where the Chief had been sitting when we arrived. She had us stand to the left side of the Chief’s throne while she stood on the right. After a few moments of grumbling Cuzco, sat on his throne and had Althea stand beside Captain Solaria. It was at that moment that I noticed that Captain Solaria’s niece and Cuzco’s daughter, was now missing from the chamber. I turned and whispered to the Chief about it. “Where did your daughter go? I didn’t see anybody take her away. Did something happen?”

Cuzco looked at me strangely for a moment before nodding. “While you and Keiko were working to heal Althea, I had the city healer come in and gather her up, as she was nearly incomprehensible despite having no obvious wounds. She’s going to be watched for the next couple of days to make sure that that nothing needs to be done to heal her before she comes back to live with me. Thank you for asking though, I do appreciate it.”

“I’m just glad to hear that she’s getting the help she needs. Let Keiko and I know if there’s anything she, Ellie, or I can do to help.”

The Chief chuckled before nodding. “I hope I don’t need anything from you three too soon, but I get the distinct impression I going to be imposing on you for a bit longer.”

As if summoned by the Chief finishing speaking, a team of ten men came inside the chamber and started placing banquet tables, along with what appeared to be benches made from logs. The four of us standing up beside Chief Cuzco were each provided a finely carved wooden chair before a banquet table was placed in front of us as well. Nearly one hundred people filed in after that and took their places at the five tables arrayed in front of Chief Cuzco and the rest of us.

Despite their number, the group of people sitting at the tables weren’t making very much noise. Instead, they were very demure, despite the fact that they were being treated to a feast. I thought it was odd, but decided that potentially it would make sense soon, so I didn’t do anything about it. More drums came from outside the chamber before a team of ten people carried in the Roc meat that was placed on enormous skewers that were set up by each table, including the head table. I could smell the Roc meat and it was tantalizing. It smelled like a cross between a Thunder Chicken and a Blizzard Raven, so I assumed it would be full of wind and water qi, potentially with a little bit of metal in there as well. I thought it was strange that they were providing us food with qi that didn’t lend itself to their specialty in fire qi, but that confusion was cleared up when I saw the next few things that were brought in.

They were all foods incredibly high in fire and wind qi. There were Ember Mushrooms, Gale Acorns, and many more delectable things. I noticed that no one around the room was eating at this point, despite the tables being over-laden with massive amounts of food and the spits that were set up with Roc meat were prepped and ready to be carved.

Chief Cuzco stood up and opened his arms to his community. “Friends, we are gathered here today to welcome a pair of cultivators who have been foretold for Great Solar Cycles. They are going to be our guests for the foreseeable future, so I hope that each of you does your best to make them feel welcome. This feast is simply the first step in endearing ourselves to our guests, so please be on your best behavior.” A few people in the audience chuckled, but were immediately shut up by being punched in the arms by their neighbors, who obviously didn’t want to get in trouble.

“I would like to make sure that everyone pays thanks to the fact that we are not in dire straits as our sister clan, the Moonrise Clan, is today. May the Sunrise Clan live on for another Five Great Solar Cycles!”

The crowd cheered and took that as an invitation to start eating. Despite our misgivings about the previous speech, Keiko and I dug into the food, including feeding quite a bit to Ellie, who was given a small bowl that was placed between the two of us at the table. I couldn’t help but wonder what happened to the Moonrise Clan recently, I hadn’t even expected them to still exist, but then again, I had thought the same thing about the Sunrise Clan, so maybe I was underestimating cultivators who didn’t fit my traditional picture.

The food was delicious. I was told that it was a Chaos Roc that had provided the meat we’d eaten, though it was a juvenile so it hadn’t had time to generate all the types of qi before being hunted.

Chapter 14

Keiko, Ellie, and I were all seated around the fire in Captain Solaria’s four-room house later that night when I decided to bring it up with Captain Solaria about the Moonrise Clan’s predicament.

She shook her head sadly, “The Indus Tribe found their final remaining city and they’re currently on the run with only a few bolt holes left to go to. We would help if we could, but we’re so far from where they’re settled that it is nearly impossible for anyone, but Cuzco or I, to make it to them in less than three or four months. By then, there would be almost no chance of any of them still being alive.”

She sighed before continuing, she was obviously deeply saddened by the state of the Moonrise Clan. “I tried to convince Cuzco to let me go and help them, but he wouldn’t go for it. He was too worried about losing me to the Indus Tribe in an attempt to help the other clan.” She took a pull from an earthen jug that she had beside her before proffering it to Keiko and I. We both politely declined, so she took a big sip before putting it down beside her again. “What do you two know about the Indus tribe?”

I shrugged, “Not much. We know that they control the Inheritance of the Eclipse currently and that they are all decently powerful cultivators. We also know that there were rumors that they were cannibals, but we’ve never had that confirmed by someone who’d actually met one. Is that the case?” I knew that I sounded skeptical at that point, but the sheer anger radiating off of Captain Solaria made me think that I’d done something wrong.

Before I could try to defend myself, Captain Solaria launched into a tirade. “The Indus Tribe are the bane of every civilized being on this island. They kill, rape, and eat anything that isn’t them. If they don’t find any of us, they eat themselves. You would think that with them having been here for over two thousand years, they’d have wiped themselves out, but for some reason they keep finding more and more of us. I’ve even heard that they breed Sunrise and Moonrise Clan members so that they have more of us to eat.” She spat into the fire which crackled from the alcohol in her spit. “I’ve lost more friends to the Indus Tribe than any kind of magical beast. They are ruthless and, as far as we’re concerned, innumerable. The way they fight in pairs, it’s not natural. It’s like they know what each other are thinking. They dodge the attacks from their partners that should’ve killed them and demolish our fighters with little to no effort.”

It took everything I had not put my hand on her shoulder at that point, but I didn’t know how she would react to an outsider doing that. Instead, I did my best to help her.

“I have good news and bad news for you. Which would you like first?” Keiko looked at me from her slumped over position by the fire, but when she saw the gleam in my eyes, she just nodded and laid back down.

Captain Solaria’s eyes narrowed, “I do not like the game you’re playing, but I’m a bad-news-first kind of person.” She took another huge swig from her earthenware jug before setting it down with surprising force. For some reason, it didn’t shatter, so I assumed it had been reinforced in some way.

I grinned at her, which earned me another scowl. “The bad news is, you’re not going to be in town for a few months.” Her eyes widened. “The good news is, that we’re going to go help the Moonrise Clan tomorrow.” She gasped, but I kept going. “There is nothing on this planet, or anywhere else, that could stop me from helping people who have done nothing wrong defend themselves from an invading force, especially if that invading force is known for capturing, breeding, and eating people.” I shuddered with rage and unbeknownst to me started spinning up Inferno qi in my lower core.

Captain Solaria gasped and pointed at my lower belly. “That was Dawn qi! How did you do that? I thought it was just our clan who knew the special method to create it.”

It took me a few seconds to calm down enough that I could stop the Inferno qi from raging out of control in my lower core. After that, I addressed Captain Solaria’s question.

“I’ve always called it Inferno qi and I discovered it as I was walking through the mountains of this region. I’ve always been a user of fire and wind qi, so I was just trying to find ways to use them more efficiently. It wasn’t until I actually considered the combination as something unique, in this case Inferno qi, that I noticed any dramatic change in power and qi consumption.”

I waved a hand at Keiko, who was now snuggled up nicely with Ellie and both were snoring gently on the ground by the fire on a pile of furs. “Keiko went so far as to develop something she calls Arctic qi, which she learned how to do from that little one she’s curled up with while she was still in the egg.”

Captain Solaria’s jaw dropped audibly and when I turned to see what had happened, I saw her awestruck face.

“Are you okay? Did something happen?”

Captain Solaria stood up and howled at the ceiling before looking back at me with a wolfish grin. “What you call Inferno qi is what we call Dawn qi, it’s the greatest legacy left behind by our first Chief. Arctic qi is the special technique of the Moonrise Clan. Between the two of you, you represent the inheritance of both tribes. Maybe there’s hope for this island yet!”

The day that followed was a whirlwind of activity. Captain Solaria took us down to the market and introduced us to a few people, namely Ironbellows and Mistress Lana of the inn/tavern. After that, she bid us farewell and said she was going to take care of the issue with her brother before our trip.

Mistress Lana was a gentle-looking brunette woman with the hardened edge of a Brain cultivator. She happily made us breakfast and told us stories about how Captain Solaria and Chief Cuzco used to run around the city without a care in the world as children. She explained that the former Chief had waited until very late in life to have children. He was always convinced that he would be able to advance to the level of a Saint cultivator and would be able to have children then. My favorite story she told was the one where little Solaria and Cuzco got caught freeing the pigs from the market and riding them through the streets like they were steeds bred for it. Keiko, Ellie, and I, along with Mistress Lana herself, all got a kick out of that one, especially when she did an impression of Solaria riding the biggest hog of the bunch. Her arms were waving all about as her legs were bowed out as far as they could without her falling over.

As we were eating our breakfast of porridge and pan-fried Thunder Chicken chunks, I noticed that Ellie looked to be working out her wings in an attempt to see if she could fly today. Keiko and I encouraged her and after a few false starts, found that she was able to fly at about Keiko’s head height for almost half an hour before getting tired and needing to rest on Keiko’s shoulder or my head. As we cheered her success, she trilled happily and I knew that she was proud of her accomplishment. Keiko and I both laughed and joked about how much more difficult it was going to be to keep her out of trouble now, which made Ellie snort dismissively.

I was convinced that Ellie was more than just a magical beast because of the stories my grandfather told me. The Arctic Coatl he told me the story about was able to speak and I hoped that our little girl would eventually be able to do that too, but I’d didn’t think that she was old enough, or strong enough, to do that yet.

After breakfast we bid Mistress Lana ado and went over to visit Ironbellows. We entered the forge and were greeted by a wave of heat that set Keiko stumbling while I, maybe due to my usage of Inferno qi, was just fine. I checked inside the forge and saw the green hint of Inferno qi being used to heat the metal. Before I could turn around to ask Old Ironbellows about the forge, someone walked up behind me and poked me in the back with his hammer. I turned around to see who had poked me and found a short, angry, bald man glaring at me.

“Where do you get off comin’ into my forge? Who do you think you are? The guard captain’s consort?” Old Ironbellows did not seem pleased by the fact that I was in there scoping out his forge without his permission.

I smiled broadly at him and held up my hands defensively. “No, I don’t think I’m anything special. I was just coming over to say hello after Captain Solaria introduced us this morning, I hope you remember that.”

The old angry man spat into the forge and the green flame spiked in both size and temperature. I wasn’t sure if it was because of him adding more Inferno qi to the source, or if it was because he was drinking and there was alcohol in his spit.

He scowled before grumbling while shaking his head. “Aye, I remember. I just don’t remember giving you permission to come to my forge and investigate without my say so.” He jerked a thumb toward the forge. “I take it you’ve never seen a qi flame that color and wanted to learn how I made my qi do that? I don’t care who your friends with, I’M NOT TELLING!” He crossed his arms and gritted his teeth.

Keiko snorted from the doorway before shooting me a mental message. “I want to go and see if there’s anything that Ellie or I would like as snacks in the market. We back soon, holler if you need us.” She turned on her heel and walked away.

I shot a message back to Keiko. “Thanks for let me know, will do.”

I smiled back at the arms-crossed, grumpy, form of Old Ironbellows before generating a small ball of Inferno qi in the palm of my hand.

The look on his face was absolutely priceless.

“Oh, you mean my Inferno qi?”

The old man sputtered and stared at me like I had grown an additional head before growing more serious. Before I knew it, I had my back pressed up against the wall and the same hammer was pressed against my chest, but this time I couldn’t get free. I checked the old man’s cultivation, to see what kind of trouble I was in and was shocked to find that Old Ironbellows was also a Sage level cultivator. He was just as powerful, if not more so, then the Chief and Captain Solaria.

He growled at me, “Who taught you our secrets? Was it Solaria? She’s always been a hothead with an overly large heart for outsiders. I can’t believe she even understood it well enough to use it, let alone teach someone to handle it as easily as you just did.”

Captain Solaria’s stance on outsiders was news to me, though I guess it did kind of makes sense, seeing as she had tried to assist the Moonrise clan even before Keiko or I had mentioned it.

I shook my head vigorously in denial of his previous statement. “No, that’s not it at all.” The old man waved his hand at me as if to say ‘go on’. So, I did just that. I explained how I had been experimenting with fire and wind qi and in a moment of epiphany, had figured out how to mix the two together in such a way that they became Inferno qi.

The old smith finally let me down from the wall, but he didn’t back off at all beyond that. He stood scowling at me, as if I had done something wrong, for what felt like an eternity, but was probably something more akin to two minutes. After that he backed off and went to stand by his forge before waving for me to follow him, which I did. I was still curious as to how it worked.

Old Ironbellows sat down on a black metal stool that I would’ve bet money on him having made himself. He pointed at another stool just like his a few feet away and indicated that I should sit down.

He took a deep breath before sighing. “I’m sorry to bother you young one, but it’s very unusual for anyone to be able to use Dawn qi, let alone someone who wasn’t trained in the ways of the first chief. What you did was remarkable and it would be a shame if I didn’t help you with that ability. I understand that you call it Inferno qi, but we both understand that most likely, the differences between your Inferno qi and my Dawn qi are probably very minor. Either way, it’s an intensely hot flame, though your Inferno qi appears to be a bit less nurturing than our Dawn qi.

He pointed back at the forge with a single gnarled finger. “This here forge has been in our clan since the time of the first chief. He built it with his own two hands, brick by brick, before teaching the first Dawnsmith how to work metal using Dawn qi. Blades and other tools made with Dawn qi nearly always develop some sort of fire or wind attributed affect to them.

“The more skilled the Dawnsmith, the more powerful the effect. At my level of cultivation, I can make it so that blades I make are superheated to the point of cauterizing wounds when they’re struck. I can also make it so that the blade extends out around four inches from the end or edge of the blade with wind qi. All of those abilities become innate to the blades or weapons based on the intent I put into the forging.”

“Dawn qi, and I’d assume the same can be said of your Inferno qi, isn’t like other forms of qi. Because it requires intent to create, it reacts to your thoughts better than the standard types of qi. There are stories of the first Dawnsmith creating weapons that were able to launch balls of Dawn qi without using any of the wielders’ stored qi. Weapons like that, especially ones that don’t require the use of a powerful core or any kind of incredible material, are what allowed the Sunrise clan to rise to prominence on this island. We were able to be so magnanimous in part because we knew that if things got bad, we would be able to defend ourselves from all comers without issue.”

He looked sad after that, like he wished that the heyday of his clan hadn’t passed yet, but he knew it had.

I nodded thoughtfully, “I agree with what you said about Dawn and Inferno qi being different from other types of qi. I’ve noticed that I don’t have to try so hard to shape it for it to actually do what I wanted it to do. It’s almost as if it’s already doing what I want it to do when I create it, rather than having to spend the effort or brainpower on doing so.”

The old man chuckled, “You’d be right, the more familiar you get with it, the better it’s going to do that.” He grabbed the large earthenware jug and took a large drink of it before handing it to me. Seeing my hesitation, he laughed. “It’s just water.”

I took the jug from him and took a large pull; the water was ice cold despite being so near the forge. It really hit the spot, so I sighed in pleasure and smacked my lips appreciatively. “Thank you very much, that was great. How do you keep it so cold next to the forge?”

The smith waved his hand dismissively. “That’s a one-inch-thick earthenware jug, it would have to be in here all day for it even warm up a little bit. The mud that we make them from around here has a ton of water and earth qi in it, along with a little bit of metal qi. That combination lends itself to keeping things cold for a long time.”

“That’s really neat, I’ll have to pick one up from the market before too long, it’s always good to have access to something cold.”

The smith looked at me silently for a few moments before sighing. “I’m sorry to say, but from what I could tell of your Inferno qi, it is likely something that would not be good for forging. It’s too wild to heat metal properly.”

My face fell, I had just started thinking about all of the wonderous things I would be able to create with my Inferno qi, only to have those dreams smashed almost immediately.

The smith tutted a gnarled finger. “It would, however, be excellent for use in alchemy.”

I was completely flummoxed at that statement. “If Inferno qi is too wild for forging, why would it be good for alchemy? Doesn’t alchemy take even more delicate flame control than forging? You’re not making any sense.” I waved my hand at the forge dismissively.

Old Ironbellows slapped my hand away from the forge like a child going for too many cookies before dinner. “Now, listen here.” He waited for me to nod, while rubbing my hand where it was slapped.

“Forging requires a gentle, nurturing, flame with intense heat to remain stable for long periods of time. Dawn qi is excellent at all of those things. This forge remains lit day in and day out with little to no input needed from me, just the occasional influx of qi to keep it lit every day or so.

“Your Inferno qi, however, is tempestuous, yet intensely powerful. I could tell that it’s destructive ability far outstrips that of Dawn qi at first glance. It may be wild, but I could tell from the way you controlled it to show me that you have incredible control over it already. With that level of control, you should have no issue using your Inferno qi for alchemy.

“Alchemists need flames that can go from hot to almost cold, all the way up to heat so intense that it can reduce materials to ash while maintaining their alchemical properties for pills and such. Your Inferno qi seems purpose made for alchemy, which leads me to believe that you might have been, at least subconsciously, considering alchemy while creating Inferno qi.”

I thought back to my time in the Inheritance of the Lovers. I had done a bit of research into alchemy, but I had put it aside in an effort get stronger as quickly as possible. I had debated purchasing an alchemical pot from the quartermaster down the hall, but didn’t end up doing so. It was something I had really wanted to do, but it never felt like the right time. That intense desire must have helped flavor my fire and wind qi combination, Inferno qi.

Maybe this was the moment I had been waiting for.

I grinned at Old Ironbellows. “I think you’re right. Do you know where I might be able to find a decent alchemical pot around here? Do they sell them in the market?”

The old man laughed so hard he might have peed if he hadn’t been as powerful a cultivator as he was. I scowled back at him; I didn’t think what I had said was nearly that funny.

He rubbed his eyes free of tears before speaking again. “Do you think alchemical pots grow on trees or generate spontaneously in mountain caves? No, you can’t find a decent alchemical pot in the market.” My scowl turned into a deep frown, but Old Ironbellows didn’t stop there. “I do, however, know where you might find a decent pot though.”

My face brightened; hope having snatched me back from the despair I felt before. “Where?!”

The old smith’s eyes took on an amused glint at my outburst. “It’s been a long time since I met someone your age who was excited about alchemy. I never had a knack for it myself, but the man who taught me how to be a Dawnsmith was also an alchemist. He’s the one who told me the story about the alchemists’ grotto about two weeks away from here, headed toward the other side of the island. He said that there was a vast quantity of alchemical ingredients as well as a test to determine if someone was worthy of some ancient alchemical pots. My teacher told me that years ago he had tried to take the test to see if he was worthy of the special alchemical pots, but because he had already set forth on the path of alchemy, he was unable to do so.

“You see, only those who have raw, natural, talent are allowed to take the trial. The reason being that if you have any formal training, you won’t make the decisions someone with pure natural talent would.” He laughed so hard that his long, braided, beard bounced across his chest. “My master found the grotto when he had already been an alchemist for many years, so he was unable to take the test. He told me that that if I ever found someone who wondered about becoming an alchemist, but hadn’t yet tried to do so or had any training to direct them that way, I should send them there. Especially if they could harness some kind of fire combination qi like Dawn qi or your Inferno qi.”

I knew that I had to learn where that grotto was, I had to see if I was worthy of a special alchemical pot. What I had to do at that point was either convince Old Ironbellows to either take me there himself, or give me a map that would be good enough to get me there. Conveniently, it was located between the Sunrise and Moonrise clans’ lands, so stopping there along our way wouldn’t delay our travel any more than it had to. If luck had it, our travel might even space itself out well enough that it would be a good place for us to rest in the middle of our trip, but I couldn’t ask for too much.

I beamed at Old Ironbellows, doing my best to appear charming. “Is there any chance you…”

The smith sliced a hand in front of him to silence me. “No, I can’t take you there, with Captain Solaria gone, I need to be here to defend the city if things go wrong. I only retired a few years ago from being the guard captain, so the majority of those fools should still listen to me just fine if things get hairy.” He stood up from his black iron stool and walked over to a small chest that was sitting on a workbench. I saw him weave a combination of qi in an intricate pattern before the lock clicked open, he rustled around inside for a few moments before pulling out a scroll of parchment and walking over to hand it to me.

“That’s a basic map of the island, with a couple of exceptions. Our current location isn’t marked on it, for obvious reasons, but Captain Solaria can get you to one of the landmarks on there so you can follow the path it depicts to find the grotto.”

I unfurled the map and took a look at. It wasn’t an incredibly detailed map, but what it did have were a bunch of labeled landmarks that could be used to travel between the Sunrise and Moonrise clans’ lands. It even showed the best places to hide from the Indus Tribe when you were traveling to and from one of the two clans, one of which was labeled “Alchemists’ Grotto” (Secret).

He walked over and poked a finger at the Alchemists’ Grotto on my map. “This is not your average map of the island. The Alchemists’ Grotto does not show up on most people’s maps, for good reason. The alchemical items and plants that you will find there are incredibly valuable to the right people. I only ask that you follow the last request of my master about that place. He asked that, whatever you take from there, always leave one of them there. If there was only one of something, you are to leave it there until it has the ability to reproduce and then you can take the older one.

“There’s something about that grotto that helps alchemical plants grow, so you should be good to take as much as you need.” He looked at me intensely for a moment, which made me sweat a little bit. “Actually, take my advice. Take everything you can, except for the last of everything, because I don’t know the next time a member of our clan will end up there with how poorly things have been going lately. If the prophecy is right, you and your partner are going to help save our clan. Maybe me helping you with this is going to help save our clan. One can only hope!”

I sucked the map into my spatial ring before standing up from the stool and bowing deeply to Old Ironbellows. “Thank you so much for this Mr. Ironbellows.” I grinned sheepishly at the snort from the smith. “I hope I can live up to your expectations and I know that Keiko and I will do our utmost to save your clan from destruction.” I stood up straighter and locked eyes with the smith during that last line.

The smith patted me on the shoulder and smiled. “I hope that, at the very least, you keep to your own moral code. Someone as young as you, with a cultivation base like yours, is dangerous if they don’t have a good moral compass. Don’t let the temptation of power make you someone you don’t want to be. If you feel like you’re heading down that path, take a hard look at yourself for a solution, and don’t be shy about asking your partner for help there either, she seems to have a good head on her shoulders.”

Before I could respond, Keiko walked in the door of the smithy and called out my name, making me turn around. She was holding out what appeared to be a skewer of some kind of yellow fruit with chunks of Thunder Chicken. I could see from the little bloat of Ellie’s belly, that she had probably already eaten her skewers and she was dozing contentedly around Keiko’s shoulders.

The smith patted me on the back and pushed me towards her before speaking gruffly. “Now get out of here! I’ve got some smithing to do and I’m done talking for today.” His voice softened, “Feel free to stop by whenever you like though, I always welcome the company of someone trying to make something of themselves.”

After I stumbled towards the door, I stabilized and turned around to bow to Old Ironbellows one more time. “Thank you so much, I’ll keep what you said in mind and do my best to meet or exceed your expectations.”

The smith just waved a hand dismissively at me before turning to stare intently at the forge.

As Keiko and I walked away from the smithy, she looked at me strangely. “Why are you smiling? That old codger seemed to be quite the grump. Did he give you something nice?”

I chuckled, “Yes, he did give me something nice, but that’s not why I’m smiling. It was nice meeting someone who reminded me so much my grandfather. Gruff, but I could tell that he cares about people, not just things. I bet my grandfather would have really gotten along well with him.”

She patted me on the back as we headed back toward Captain Solaria’s house to wait for her. “I’ll take your word for it about the old smith, but at the very least I’m glad that you enjoyed your time with him.”

When we got back to Captain Solaria’s house, I told Keiko all about my conversation with Old Ironbellows. She was frustrated when I told her that I couldn’t become a powerful smith with my Inferno qi’s tendencies, but when I mentioned that there was a good chance that I could become an alchemist of some skill, she was ecstatic.

“You and I both know that when it comes to cultivators, pills and other permanent effects are more important than weapons or armor because someone can take away or destroy a weapon or piece of armor, but they can’t take away the body strengthening you’ve done or enhancements to your cultivation base. You becoming an alchemist is even better than you becoming a smith! Now all we have to do is get Solaria to follow your map to the grotto.”

From the door behind us, came a familiar voice. “I think that can be arranged.” I didn’t need to turn around to know that it was Solaria talking. She walked over and took her seat by the hearth before addressing Keiko and I.

“Alright, I managed to convince my brother that we need to go and assist the Moonrise clan. However,” she sighed, “you two need to prove that you are proficient with the Dawnblade and Duskguard before he will give his blessing for us to leave without an escort.”

I frowned, “If we brought an escort, we won’t be able to get there in time to actually help. As a trio, we’ll be able to travel much more quickly.”

Keiko echoed my sentiment, though she wasn’t quite as kind about it. “That’s bullshit and you know it! If we don’t go now, what’s the point!?”

Captain Solaria held out her hands placatingly. “I get it, really I do, but when you two are supposed to save our clan’s existence, but decide to head off to help another clan first … you understand how he must feel. If either of you two dies on this mission, our clan is doomed. So, he decided to see how tough you are with a fight against a pair of our guards. Both of them are brain level cultivators, so the fight isn’t stacked against you or anything like that. If you win, we can go right afterward. If you lose … we leave tomorrow morning with an escort of four guards.”

I was frustrated with the Chief’s decision, but I had to begrudgingly accept it. We were his clan’s last hope, so it made sense that he would be very protective of us. Also, if we couldn’t defeat a pair of guards, we had no business going on this mission with just Captain Solaria.

I mentally messaged Keiko, “It’s a fair deal. We also don’t really have a choice in the matter, so we might as well get on with it.”

She grumbled back the same way, “I don’t like people asking us to prove ourselves to them. Who are they to judge us? Either way, I agree that we should just get it over with.”

I nodded to Captain Solaria, “You’ve got a deal Captain. We’d like to get this fight underway as soon as possible, so we can leave as soon as possible.”

Captain Solaria’s face softened. “I’m glad you understand. Also, if we’re going to be traveling together, please just call me Sol, all my friends do.”

I barked out a short laugh, startling her. “Sounds like a deal. Sol, can you please get those guards ready?” Keiko and I exchanged a nod. “We’re ready to fight them right now.”

All of us stood up and Sol reached out to shake my hand. I took it and pumped it once, firmly.

“I’ll have the guard ready down in the arena in twenty minutes. Take that time to get ready, however you two need to do so.” She quirked an eyebrow at the pair of us, making Keiko blush.

I stifled another bark of laughter. “Thank you, we’ll see you in twenty minutes.”

Sol smiled and shook her head before heading out the door and running toward the arena down along the base of the mountain hollow.

Keiko glared at me. “You could have said that we weren’t going to do anything like she was insinuating!”

“Who said we weren’t?” I said coyly.

Rather than responding verbally, she launched a jab at my head, which I dodged effortlessly by leaning back just a touch.

“Sol isn’t sure how our cultivation works and you and I both know that after doing that we are a lot stronger for a while. We don’t, however, have the time for that right now.” I pulled the Duskguard from my spatial ring and started doing a few katas with them. “I recommend taking a few minutes to get used to how long the Dawnguard is. You’re not used to fighting with something so much bigger than yourself,” she glared at me, so I hastily added, “though I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

As Keiko and I did our cut does with our new weapons, we both marveled at how good they felt. As Keiko went through a series of cut is it only seen her use a few times she exclaimed about how light the Dawnblade was and how easy it was to maneuver. I actually had the opposite experience with the Duskguard, they were significantly heavier than the last pair of tonfas I’d used, but they weren’t too heavy. Instead, they felt like steadfast guardians to be wielded by someone with something to protect, which was perfect for me. I didn’t have to change my katas up much to get used to the Duskguard, I just had to switch to one of the forms I used to use with my staff before it broke.

At that moment, I remembered that I still had the shattered remains of the staff my grandfather gave me in my spatial ring, but I didn’t know how I was going to put it back together or do anything else with it. That was a thought for another time, so I put it out of my head and continued through a set of katas alongside Keiko for the next seven or eight minutes. After that, Keiko and I sat down by the hearth and did some Orbital Breathing to center ourselves. It also had the wonderful side effect of purifying the qi inside our bodies so that our qi constructs would be more pure and therefore stronger. Ellie wound her way in between us and greedily ate the qi imperfections that were shed during our Orbital breathing. When we finished, ten minutes later, she looked as if she was still hungry and was snapping at us before trilling softly.

I patted her on the head gently. “Sorry little one, I promise we’ll cultivate longer next time, but we’ve got something to do now.”

With a minute to spare, Keiko and I walked into the arena that was built along the edge of the base of the mountain hollow, hand in hand. When I looked around, I saw that the stands appeared to be able to hold almost ten thousand people, though only the first few rows were full. It seems that the entire city came out to watch us fight. I saw Chief Cuzco sitting in a chair set along the center line of the arena. He was beaming at Keiko and I.

When we reached the edge of the battlefield, Chief Cuzco stood up and held his hands out to quiet the murmurs of the crowd. When the crowd quieted down to whisper, he addressed them. “People of Sun’s End, we bring you here today for a special occasion. Our saviors.” He waved his hand toward Keiko and I as we were walking toward Aria.

“I declare that they are going to not only help us, but also our sister tribe, the moonrise clan. In an effort to see if they are currently worthy of doing so alongside our steadfast captain so aria, we have decided to arrange a little exhibition match between two of our esteemed city guards and the two chosen ones. Captain Solaria and myself will be the judges of this match and between the two of us, we will decide the winners of this match to determine if the chosen ones are capable enough to take on this dangerous mission.”

Aria stepped up to the edge of the battlefield and waved for Keiko and I to join her. After we did so, she waved her other hand toward a group of a dozen men and women of differing levels of cultivation. Two large men swaggered over to join us.

Aria looked all four of us in the eyes before speaking. “This is to be a good clean match, there will be no deliberate killing or maiming. The winning condition is three solid strikes on each member of the opposing team three times. After the first person has been struck three times, they are removed from the match, though their team can still win. Are the rules clear?”

Keiko and I nodded along with our opponents. Aria nodded, “Good, now introduce yourselves. We’re not the Indus tribe where we have people fight to the death without knowing each other’s names.” All of us around the battlefield grimaced at the idea.

The larger of our opponents reached out and grabbed my hand for tight handshake before speaking with an incredibly low voice. “My name’s Ragnar, don’t forget it.”

Ragnar was every bit of six and a half feet tall and probably weighed in at around four hundred pounds. He was a mountain of a man and I could feel the strength radiating out of his hands. Based on the way his aura looked, I would’ve bet everything I had that he was going to be an earth cultivator, potentially with a bit of fire thrown in due to where he grew up.

The slightly smaller man reached out and took Keiko’s hand before pumping it once gently. “My name is Roderick. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Roderick stood about six foot two and three hundred pounds. He was slight compared to Ragnar, but anywhere else he would have looked even more enormous. From the way he moved and the look of his aura, I could tell that he was probably a wind qi user, though I thought I saw a hint of water in there as well.

I was surprised that neither of the people they chose to fight us were users of Dawn qi. I wondered if users of Dawn qi were so rare that they wouldn’t risk them in a fight like this. I would have to ask Aria about that on our trip.

Aria stood on the sidelines and pointed to either side of the battlefield. “Both of you, stand within ten feet of the end line and wait for my signal. I want a good clean fight, don’t make me regret this.” She growled that last line.

Ragnar grinned and let out a hearty chuckle as he walked away. Before he got too far away, I heard him whisper to Roderick. “The chief said to do everything we could to keep make it so that they can’t walk away today. He even promised us some of the clan’s stockpiled pills if we manage to put them down badly enough that they can’t leave this week.” Roderick, to his credit, gasped and looked at Ragnar scandalously, but he didn’t disagree or try to dissuade him from his course of action.

As Keiko and I were walking, I glanced back at Aria and she was glaring directly at her two subordinates from the city guard. I had the distinct impression that when we got back, those two were going to be dealing with her wrath. I don’t think she took kindly to them working behind the scenes for her brother.

Keiko and I settled into a formation that was a little unusual for us. I was slightly ahead of Keiko and she slightly behind and to my left. Before the match could begin, I felt a slight chill on my forehead and when I reached up to touch it, I felt Ellie up there.

Sighing I pulled Ellie down and looked her in the eyes. “Go head over by Aria, okay? Keiko and I will be fine.”

Ellie’s eyes darted from me over to Keiko and then back to me before she mewed sadly and flew quickly over to Aria before curling around to the crown of her head grumpily. Aria looked alarmingly over to me before I shrugged. After that, she took it like a champ and pretended like nothing was happening, though I did notice that she was patting Ellie occasionally on the head to keep her calm.

Aria roared out to the guard team as well as Keiko and I. “Alright let the fight begin in three, two, one, fight!”

Roderick and I screamed toward each other with weapons at the ready. He was wielding a long spear with a blue silk cloth wrapped around beneath the head of it. The cloth flared in the breeze as he used wind qi to push himself more quickly toward me. I twirled the Dawnguard once so that I had them extending forward from my left hand and backward from my right. I used wind qi to match Roderick’s speed and a second later we clashed.

Roderick was damn good with his spear, he made it hard for me to even get close enough to him to strike by unleashing a flurry of spear thrusts and sweeps. I did my best to defend myself as I heard Ragnar and Keiko engage.

Ragnar was fighting with what appeared to be an enormous hammer made out of some sort of dull gray metal. Keiko’s Dawnblade on the other hand flashed like the sun, its white blade was accentuated by the dark bluish-black leather of the handle. Its golden hilt shone as Keiko shoved metal qi through it to reinforce it even more.

Ragnar laughed when he saw how small Keiko was compared to him, though the Dawnblade gave Keiko plenty of reach to compete with Ragnar and his hammer.

The fight was over much faster than he would’ve expected. All it took was four quick slashes from the Dawnblade and it was over. First, she slashed the haft of Ragnar’s hammer, leaving him holding both halves awkwardly, and the other three were delivered on his right shoulder, left thigh, and right thigh in rapid succession. It seemed that Keiko was trying to send him a message.

Ragnar was indignant and ignored the final hit to try and grapple Keiko. Before Aria could even try and stop him, Keiko just blurred past him in a burst of speed and slapped him in the face with the broad of the Dawnblade, sending him straight to the ground. She stood over him with blade poised until he held up his hands in defeat.

I, on the other hand, was having a much more difficult time with Roderick. He was almost as fast as I was, and his weapon gave him incredibly long reach. It wasn’t until we’d been fighting for over a minute that I found his pattern. He always thrusted three times at my lower torso before slashing twice at my face and finally one down towards my left chest.

That knowledge was all it took for me to dismantle him. As he went for the final attack in his combination, toward my left chest, I struck. Using my left tonfa, I brushed away his spear before delivering a swift roundhouse kick to his right ankle. He was so focused on his spear that he didn’t notice the fact that I hadn’t tried to attack with my tonfas, not even once. I was only reading his pattern so that I would be able to end the fight quickly and without injury. As soon as he stumbled, it was over. I darted in close to his chest and delivered a single strike to each pectoral. Upon the third strike, Rodrick stood back and bowed to me, showing significantly more class than his comrade in arms.

“I see now, you fight primarily with kicks, not weapons. From the way you were moving, I had no idea. It was a good match.” He bowed again.

I bowed shallowly in return, “We were trying to conserve our energy. We knew that after we won this fight, we would be leaving immediately afterward, so we wanted to see if we could use as little energy as possible to finish these fights out.”

Roderick frowned, but I held my hand before continuing. “I’m not saying you’re not a good fighter, I’m saying that when I noticed you always attacked in a pattern, it became easy for me to pick it apart. You always overextend on the last strike towards the chest of your opponent. I would be willing to bet that last strike has won you more than a few fights, but I think you’re over reliant on it. If someone who’s only been a Brain cultivator for less than a week can decode what you’re doing, it won’t take anyone of a higher cultivation level any time at all to tear you apart the same way I did.”

Roderick looked shocked at first, but over the course of my explanation his eyes grew wider. “Thank you for the analysis. I rarely fight the same opponent more than once, besides my fellow guard members, and they can rarely even see my blows, let alone be able to decipher the pattern I’m making with them. You are an extraordinary young man and I wish you the best of luck on your mission.” With that, Roderick walked over and helped Ragnar up before dragging him off the field toward the entrance opposite where Keiko and I had come in.

Aria walked into the center of the battlefield as Keiko kicked the head of Ragnar’s hammer, or least what was left of it. The head of the hammer streaked out the exit that Roderick and Ragnar had left through and slammed into the wall with a loud clang.

From that way I heard Ragnar yelled out. “Hey, that almost hit me!”

Aria looked at Keiko with a small frown, to which Keiko responded with a grin. Aria shook her head before turning to address the oddly sedated populace of the city. “With that, it appears that our to chosen ones are indeed worthy of traveling with me to save our sister clan. Does anyone have any objections?”

For a few seconds it looked like a couple of the other guards were going to object, but their fellows pulled them back to stop them from doing so, so as not to dishonor their profession any more than Ragnar already had.

“Hearing no objections, Steven, Keiko, and I will be leaving forth with for the Moonrise clan’s territory. If you have anything you’d like to give any of us, please have it placed by the west gate for us to gather on the way out. We will be leaving in ten minutes, so if you need to go and gather said items, I recommend you leave here now.”

About a dozen people streaked off toward the exit at her words, I was willing to bet that the gifts were more for Aria than they were for Keiko and I, but it still felt nice to know that someone was trying to do something nice for us.

Aria addressed the crowd once more. “The rest of you, be prepared in the following days, because there’s a good chance that to save the Moonrise clan, we will have to bring them here to Sun’s End. We all know there’s plenty of housing for them to join us, but I would appreciate if anyone who isn’t busy would spend some time cleaning out some of the four and eight-room dwellings, because as you all know the Moonrise clan is made up of larger families. Thank you all for coming, I hope you had an exciting, if short, break. Please go back about your days.”

The rest of the people in the audience slowly moved back to their daily lives and I her more than a few of them talking about how Keiko had dismantled first Ragnar’s hammer and then him in succession. I wouldn’t have been surprised if some sort of fan club had popped up for Keiko following that, at least among the younger girls of the city.

Ellie took this opportunity to fly off from Aria’s head. She didn’t settle on Keiko or I, instead she flew around us in a figure eight pattern while excitedly trilling.

Chief Kuzco was standing when we went over to speak with him. He didn’t exactly look happy, but he also didn’t look mad. Instead, he looked … pensive. “That was well fought, both of you tore apart one of our finest guardsmen, well done.”

Keiko spat at the mention of Ragnar being a fine guard. “Ragnar is a bully, if that’s what you consider a fine guard … I don’t think I’ll be coming back here.” I nodded along with Keiko in solidarity. No one got to speak down to Keiko in front of me, no one.

Before Chief Cuzco could speak, Aria butted in. “Ragnar is a great fighter, but his views on female cultivators are incredibly outdated. Unless a female cultivator proves that they can beat him in a fight, he doesn’t show them any respect at all.” She cracked her knuckles. “I think when we get back to town, I’ll take a few days and really beat it into him that he’s supposed to protect and serve all of the people of Sun’s End, not just those he decides are worth it.” Seeing the look of disgust on Keiko and my faces’, she continued. “If he doesn’t shape up, I’ll kill him myself. I can’t have someone who’s as toxic as him around masquerading as a protector of the people.”

Chief Kuzco gasped at that. “Are you serious Solaria? That man is a third-generation City Guard! Where would you find someone to replace him?”

Aria snorted, “I think that Evelyn would make a great replacement for him. She’s nearly as strong as he is and I don’t think she’ll have the outdated misogynistic opinions he does.”

That shut chief Kuzco up for a few seconds. He took another second or two to collect himself before speaking again. “Dear sister, you are a brute. Well, I don’t believe I will be able to stop you from leaving now. Because I had an inkling that this is how the fight would go, I took the liberty of having care packages put together for the three of you. They’re nothing special, food, toiletries, a single person tent for you Solaria and a larger tent for our two chosen ones. There also a few other odds and ends in them, but just take a look when you get the spatial rings and you’ll be good to go.” He stepped over and gave Aria a hug, which she returned gently.

After their embrace ended, he looked sad. “I’m gonna miss having you in the city, you’re the only person who isn’t afraid to call me on my bullshit.”

I snorted from behind Aria’s left shoulder. “Old Ironbellows said that he’d be stepping in as interim guard captain until Solaria returned. I don’t think you’re going to have any problem finding someone to call you out on your bullshit.”

Kuzco’s face drained of all color before he started brushing off his shoulders and sighing nervously. “Well, I guess I will have someone in town to call me out.” He looked nervous, like he and Old Ironbellows may have actually had a run in or two of that kind. “I hope you have a nice trip and I can’t wait to see you when you return. It’ll be just like the stories that dad used to tell us about, where the heroes went off to rescue people and came back with wonderful stories to tell their friends.”

Aria hugged him one more time before stepping back, I could’ve sworn I saw a tear roll down her cheek, but maybe it was just a trick of the light. “See you soon Kuzco, don’t run the place in the ground while I’m gone, okay?” All four of us laughed and Ellie trilled along happily, enjoying the fact that everyone around her was in a good mood.

Chapter 15

As we left Sun’s End, we were escorted out by cheers and calls for us to do our best and come back safe. Aria looked sad, but also excited at the same time, to be leaving the city. She was walking backward, waving to people and calling out that she’d be back soon and that this was nothing big for her, but later on I discovered that was anything but the truth.

Ellie using her wing to wave along with Keiko and I before heading out an exceedingly well-hidden, cut stone tunnel toward the outside world. We traveled through fifty feet or so of cut stone tunnel before emerging in a deep ravine with no apparent way up. Aria showed us how to use a little bit of earth qi in our hands to make temporary hand and foot holds that would eventually slough off the next time it rained, or if you were good at it like her, immediately after your foot left them. We did our best to copy Aria’s technique, but no matter how hard we tried we couldn’t get the earth clumps to fall off as soon as we stepped off of them.

Aria laughed at out frustration and explained that it was a trick with a tiny bit of water qi threaded into the earth qi that was incredibly subtle. The one time I tried doing that, I nearly fell off the wall when I put my weight on the foothold, only to have it fall out beneath me. If it wasn’t for Ellie’s quick thinking and freezing my foot to the wall, I might’ve fallen down the ravine.

We didn’t really talk much that first day, we mostly spent it being reflective on the mission at hand. It wasn’t until we rested for the night that we actually sat down to have a conversation. After the tents were set up and the food was ready, Keiko and I finally revealed to Aria that we had a stop we needed to make on our path to the Moonrise clan’s territory.

I pulled out the map and sheepishly handed it to her. “Old Ironbellows recommended that I stop at the Alchemists’ grotto on this map to see if I can qualify for any special items from there. He said it might be important for me.”

I walked over behind Aria and traced the path between the Sunrise clan’s territory and the Moonrise clan’s territory before finding the Alchemists’ grotto about one third of the way between the two.

She nodded along as she inspected the map. “What did Old Ironbellows tell you about this map?”

I shrugged, “He said that it was a standard map anybody in town would have, but it also had the Alchemists’ Grotto on it. He said that was the only thing special about it.”

Aria laughed out loud, long and hard. It took her a moment to collect herself before she could speak again. She looked me in the eye. “That old man took a liking to you Steven. This map is anything but a standard map. Have you looked at it since we left?”

I shook my head, “No, should I have?”

Aria turned the map around with a finger pointed at it and showed it to me. Near her fingertip there was a tiny black triangle that hadn’t been there before in the mountainous region.

She chuckled again. “Not only does this map show us where all the good hiding spots are against the Indus Tribe, it also tracks our location so we can’t get lost. This map is anything but ordinary, it’s probably the equivalent of a Sky grade artifact.”

Keiko spit out a bit of the soup I’d made for dinner. “Some old man gave you a Sky grade artifact and you didn’t even notice? How dumb are you?” She grinned from ear to hear before coughing up more soup and having to set the bowl down the ground.

I wiped the little bit of soup that made it to my face from Keiko’s accident before turning to Aria. “I had no idea it was anything but a normal map. He told me it was an old map he had laying around, why would he lie?”

Aria took one more look at the map and rolled it back up before handing it back to me. “That old codger is the hidden gem of Sun’s End. He’s probably the most powerful person in the entire city, but instead of spending his time bossing us around, he spends his time creating weapons that will help us defend ourselves as well as teaching the younger generation how to cultivate properly. He must’ve seen something in you that he felt was worth nurturing. You’re very lucky, with this map the danger of our trip is reduced significantly. When we get close to dangers, I can tell that it’s going to highlight them for us and let us know what’s coming, or at least that there is something coming. The only thing this map won’t help us against is the Indus Tribe and the weather. It’s early spring now, so we won’t have to deal with too many bad snowstorms, mostly just light rainstorms here. The Indus Tribe, on the other hand, is going to be a bigger problem. They always hunt in groups and they’ve been scouring this region for the last ten years pretty regularly. It won’t be until we get to the forest region that we should be mostly safe from them. However, it looks like your Alchemists’ Grotto is here in the mountains, so we’ll have to hunt for it when we get there.”

Hearing how highly Aria talked about the map I got from Old Ironbellows, I really wished that I’d had more time to spend with him. Anybody who would willingly give something that valuable to someone they barely knew obviously had a good sense for people. I would’ve loved to talk with him about his tribulations to become the kind of cultivator he was, but I guess it would have to wait until the next time I saw him.

Without really thinking about it, I generated a ball of Inferno qi and started passing it from hand to hand while I was thinking about something else. I had a habit of doing that, using it to form different shapes to calm myself down. I’d been doing the same thing with fire qi since I became a Body cultivator.

Aria’s face was surprised when she got my attention and I looked up to see her. “You can’t just be using your Inferno qi out in the open like this. What if someone were to see it?”

I laughed, “The only people around are you and Keiko, plus Ellie. Also, even if someone did see it, unless they have incredibly keen qi senses, it just looks like green fire qi.”

That’s when it all went to hell.

The first sign of the attack came in the form of a single arrow streaking to land between my feet. It was immediately followed by a dozen more arrows that Aria quickly blocked with a wall of wind qi that formed into a sort of shell over our campsite. It only took Keiko and I a few more seconds to get ready, her drawing the Dawnblade and me drawing the Duskguard. Ellie hissed from her position around Keiko’s shoulders, but she didn’t fly off. Instead, I saw tiny needles of qi forming in front of her mouth, it seemed like our little girl was ready to help defend herself and us.

Aria took a single glance at the lone arrow that she hadn’t blocked and cursed under her breath. She turned to look at Keiko and I with slitted eyes. “It’s the Indus tribe. Somehow, they found us, but I have no idea how. This is supposed to be a safe path until we get to one of the safehouses on the map. I guess we didn’t push hard enough to reach the first one in time.” She clenched her fists in rage and coated them with what appeared to be Dawn qi.

We had traveled until the sun was completely gone from the sky, so there was no natural light to be had besides that of the stars and the moon, but it was a new moon so the moon wasn’t doing much of anything for lighting.

Aria looked at back at us one more time before springing through the shell of wind qi she had created and out into the darkness. The shell of wind qi remained behind her after she left, but I didn’t know how long it was going to last. I locked eyes with Keiko and worked with her to put into play one of the plans from the tournament that we didn’t get to use. It actually called for four people, but I figured she’d be able to roll with the adjustments on the fly, just like I could.

“It’s time for Plan S, Keiko. Cover me for a second and I’ll figure out who, or what, we’re dealing with.”

Keiko hurried over and stood overtop my crouched form as I launched out a large pulse of qi trying to get a better picture of the state of the battlefield. My pulse found a group of twenty people standing up on top of the nearby cliff. I assumed they were the archers that had been firing on us. I also saw that Aria was set up to take care of them, so I didn’t feel like we had to worry about them anymore. The figures that worried me were the trio headed toward Keiko, Ellie, and I at ground level. I didn’t put enough qi behind the pulse to get their cultivation levels, but they were walking with purpose and didn’t seem at all scared by Aria’s split-second reaction to the hail of arrows.

I set up behind Keiko and tapped her on the shoulder. “We’ve got three more enemies coming down the western path. They don’t seem scared of Aria, so we should be careful.” I rotated around Keiko so that I was standing in front of her in a defensive posture, both halves of the Dusk guard turned so that the length of them were along my forearms.

I knew from my earlier testing with the Duskguard that I could channel my qi through them almost as easily as I could my hands, but that was nothing compared to what I could do with my feet. As soon as the first Indus tribe member, a man dressed in pale leather that I was pretty sure where it had come from, came within fifteen feet of me, I unleashed a torrent of Inferno qi toward him from my left foot as I spun to deflect a knife that he had thrown at me. The man tried to deflect my Inferno qi with his own wind qi, but his shield of wind lasted less than a second before my Inferno qi ate through it and then into him. As he lay screaming on the ground, his two companions walked past him as if he didn’t exist.

The torched man’s companions were wearing matching pale leather outfits. One of them appeared to be male, while the other was female, though they were both very similar in height and weight, so I could have been wrong. The pair of Indus tribe members walked over the burning corpse of their fellow tribesmen with nothing more than a sniff.

The man licked his lips. “Well, dear, it seems we’ve found ourselves a little pair of Brain cultivators. What do you think we should do with them?” His voice was as oily as his hair, which appeared to be dirty blonde with plenty of grease and dirt in it.

The man’s partner answered him with a shrill laugh. “They’re of no consequence dear, maybe they’ll even help us advance past the level of Brain cultivation ourselves. You and I both know they’re no match for us after our time in the Eclipse Academy.” Her grin revealed teeth that had been shaped into wicked points.

I quickly sent a message to Keiko. “If they’ve been to what I have to assume is the Inheritance of the Eclipse, they’re almost assuredly paired cultivators just like us. We have to be careful!”

Keiko merely grunted as she coated herself in metal qi before charging toward the female with a roar. Despite the situation, I smiled. No matter what was happening, Keiko was going to be Keiko.

Not wanting to be left behind, I charged forward with her, Dusk guard held in a defensive posture. Keiko’s first slash was met with a set of what appeared to be claws extended from the tips of the female Indus tribe member’s fingers. No normal fingernails would be able to withstand a strike from the Dawnblade, so it must be some sort of cultivation technique she used to toughen them up so much. Undeterred, Keiko unleashed another dozen slashes in the blink of an eye at the woman, but she seemed unfazed and blocked every strike with almost casual ease with her foot long fingernails.

Our female opponent laughed at Keiko’s attempts to harm her. “Little lady, you look adorable. I bet you’ll be delicious!” With that she went from being on the defensive to full on offense and Keiko was not ready for her assault.

I tried to dart in to block for her, but the male half of the pair got in my way, stopping me from interposing myself between Keiko and her opponent. He brandished a chain that was covered in spikes as he stood between Keiko and I. He lazily spun the end of his chain as he blocked all of my kicks and tonfa strikes with little to no effort. When the man smiled, his face was a match for his partners’, his teeth formed into sharp points.

When he spoke, his voice was even oilier than his hair appeared to be. “You two fight like a pair of individuals who have been together for years, but as individuals there’s no way you can deal with us.” He emphasized his point by sending his spiked chain directly into my right shoulder. there was nothing I could do to deflect it in time, he was just too fast. As I cried out in pain, he continued. “I can tell that you’re wielding sky, if not celestial, grade weapons, but you’re obviously dependent on them if this is how you fight when challenged.”

Ellie took that moment to spray her Arctic qi needles at the woman. She didn’t even flinch, letting them strike her without any reaction. I noticed that she was moving just a touch slower after Ellie’s attack, but it still wasn’t enough for Keiko to keep up with her.

I saw the man glance over toward Ellie and as he spun up his chain to strike at her, I dashed in front of it and unleashed a vicious series of kicks and tonfa strikes that he deflected with little to no effort. I didn’t particularly care that he was blocking me, I was mostly focused on him not hurting Ellie or Keiko.

Keiko wasn’t faring well; she was bleeding from over a dozen cuts from the woman’s bladed fingernails and she was getting progressively slower as she lost more and more blood. I regretted at that moment not having learned much about wood qi, because I would have done anything to be able to help her in that situation. As I watched, Ellie landed on Keiko’s shoulders before running her body backwards down the neck of Keiko’s gi and lightly biting her. A second later all of Keiko’s wounds started to glow with the greenish blue light of Arctic qi, she immediately stopped bleeding. Keiko’s speed quickly returned to normal and she was able to block most of the incoming blows from the woman, but she still couldn’t get a single solid blow in on her opponent, despite her taking more risks than she should have with her enormous blade.

The man obviously noticed that I was distracted, because the next thing I knew he had his spiked chain around my neck and was pulling me closer to himself with a totting finger.

“Rookie mistake, always keep your eye on your opponents, you need to trust that your allies can handle themselves in a fight.” He tightened the chair around my neck, the spikes digging into it and causing me to bleed, but just a little bit to start. I could tell that he was toying with me, the spikes on his chain could easily have ripped my head off, but he was enjoying himself too much to do that.

The woman who was fighting Keiko barked out a hideous laugh. “You never could stop yourself from educating your food, could you? Kill him and then help me kill this one, she’s obviously one of those moonrise bastards and you know that I like my evening drink cool.” She punctuated her laugh with a particularly fast slash which caught Keiko in the right arm, disabling it for a second before the light of Arctic qi filled the cut and a second later it became fully functional again. The woman roared in displeasure and started attacking Keiko even more feverishly than she had before.

The man sighed and looked me square in the eye. “I’m sorry my boy, but I have to listen to the missus. Maybe your next life will be better than this one, I don’t know about that, but one important thing that I do know is that you’re going to be delicious tonight.” He tightened the chain around my neck, the spikes digging in even more as my fingers scrabbled at it as I strove to prolong my life. I dropped the Duskguard in the process, but there was nothing they could do for me right now, this man was too strong for me to be able to dislodge the grip his chain had on my neck.

At that point, I gave up on escaping the chain through physical means, instead I spun up as much Inferno qi as I could in my lower core and focused on doing as much damage as humanly possible to this man before he took me out. I let my entire body go completely limp, except for my left leg. I hoped that he wouldn’t notice.

That’s when my opponent made his first and only mistake of our fight. Instead of trying to figure out why I had gone limp, he just grumbled at me in dissatisfaction. “Giving up so soon? Kids these days don’t understand what it means to die, but I’ll do my best to teach you how awful it is. I promise.” As he flashed a pointy-toothed grin at me, I did my best to hide my own smile as I kicked up my left leg and unleashed a truly hellacious blast of Inferno qi from both my heel and foot meridians. The green flames of my Inferno qi covered the man’s entire body as I heard him scream from within the torrent of qi I was throwing at him. In the end, the reason I stopped throwing Inferno qi at him wasn’t I ran out of qi, far from it in fact, it was the fact that I burned out both my heel and foot meridians as well as the qi pathways leading to them along my leg in an attempt to utterly immolate this blasted so that he didn’t get the satisfaction of eating me, Keiko, or Ellie.

The chain went limp and fell from around my neck as the man roared in pain, doing his best to try and beat out my Inferno qi’s flames. That’s one of the interesting things about Inferno qi, the flames it creates don’t go out unless they run out of qi, and I had given it everything I could for those solid three seconds that I had been able to do so. Those flames should keep burning for the next two days, at least according to the tests Keiko and I had done along the way to Sun’s End, though we did find out that enough water qi could put it out, Arctic qi was much better at doing so.

I touched the man’s spiked chain and willed it into my spatial ring. I was surprised to find that I was able to do so. He must’ve let go of it with both hands on his end, because otherwise I would never have been able to do so. I turned to glance over at Keiko, I saw that she was still struggling with the female Indus tribe member.

As I watched, Aria streaked out of the darkness, her fists still cloaked with brilliant green Dawn qi. She caught the female Indus tribe member unawares with a punch straight to the left side of her torso, which knocked her off balance enough that Keiko was finally able to land a decent blow on her. If that woman wasn’t a Brain cultivator who had reinforced her entire body, the slash from the Dawnblade would’ve taken off all of her fingers, but instead all it did was take off the pinky of her left hand as she raised it to block a little bit too slowly. She screamed in unison with her partner as the two stumbled toward each other.

Aria didn’t let up her assault and neither did Keiko. The pair of them went after the woman with renewed vigor and drove her toward her partner as I struggled to stand up while rubbing where the chain had been wrapped around my throat. I pulled my fingers away and found them coated in blood, but I trusted that Ellie would be able to take care of me after the fight, so I struggled to get up as I spun up another ball of Inferno qi to use if it became necessary.

It didn’t turn out to be necessary because as soon as the two Indus tribe cultivators came together, they reached out their hands until they touched. After that, I saw the earrings they were wearing flash with a blinding white light that filled the entire campsite. The light left all of us blinking for a few moments and when we were finally able to see again, the pair was gone. There was no sign of my Inferno qi burning anything within a one-hundred-foot radius around our campsite, or so Aria said after she went out and scouted a bit.

Aria insisted that we push on to the closest safehouse, despite it being over five hours away. She said that she was angry that that we had been accosted so soon, but I realized that she was actually afraid because of how close to her home we were when we were attacked. That meant that the Indus tribe was getting even closer to finding her and the rest of her people. Even though they lived in a hidden city, the fact that their hunters were in such close proximity meant that a cultivator talented with earth qi might be able to feel the vibrations of them working within their mountain hollow. It wasn’t my place to say anything, so I didn’t, but I did do my best to be nice to her for the rest of the run to the safehouse.

Before we started off, Ellie flew over and gave me a gentle bite on the neck, which did wonders for the wounds around my neck, but next to nothing for my heel and foot meridians. I knew that with her help I would be able to regain the use of my meridians and qi channels significantly faster than if I were to wait the normal period of time, but I really hoped that it would happen sooner, rather than later, because without both sets of meridians on my feet, Keiko’s and my Orbital Breathing would be slowed down significantly. We would be back to the efficiency we were at before we figured out the optimal method for us. Seeing as every day we purified our qi together compounded with our efforts the day before, losing even a day of optimal training could cause weeks, if not months, of delay in us ranking up as paired cultivators.

I brought up my concerns to Keiko, but she didn’t seem as worried about it as I was. She was confident that as long as Ellie kept feeding me more and more Arctic qi, she’d be able to get me back to normal within a few hours, rather than a few days. I was skeptical, but I didn’t disagree with her out loud. Ellie seemed to take my lack of confidence in her as a challenge, because she started pumping me with even more Arctic qi. So much in fact, that I was actually having trouble running because I was so cold. After about two hours of running like that, Aria got fed up and just picked me up under her arm without so much as a word and took off running even faster.

Keiko laughed as she did her best to keep up while Ellie took Aria’s action as an opportunity to inject me with even more Arctic qi, which ended up coating my entire leg in an ice shell that was so cold that I couldn’t feel the leg inside it, or any other body part within six inches of it. Let’s just say that it wasn’t a very comfortable way to run and I was very worried about four body parts, instead of just one.

When we reached the first safehouse, we were surprised to find that it was actually just a hunting blind set high up in the wall a narrow canyon. It took us almost half an hour to even find the safehouse, let alone actually get into it. Eventually we had to use the same method that Aria taught us when we were leaving Sun’s End. Rather than putting me down, Aria slung my body down her back and instructed me to wrap my arms around her neck so that she could get us up there quickly.

I heard a small snicker come from Keiko, so I shot her a vicious glare which seemed to mollify her somewhat. Less than a minute later, the three of us were seated in a room no more than eight feet on a side with a natural chimney in the center of the roof that led back into the mountain, rather than out into the open air. Despite my leg not being thawed, I did my best to prepare dinner. Just before Keiko and I were supposed to cultivate our meals, I heard, rather than felt, the ice around my leg crack loudly before falling off. Ellie tried to fly off of my neck, but was unable to do so. So instead, she curled up on top my head and trilled happily. She sounded exhausted.

Before congratulating Ellie, I took a moment to push qi down through my left leg and found that it felt just like it always did. I pushed a little bit of qi through my foot and heel meridians and felt no change there either. I gave Ellie as gentle a pat as possible on the top of her head, making sure to give her a good scratch to the ridge she had there.

“Ellie, you did a fantastic job. My leg feels as good as it ever did, maybe even better. You did a great job today sweetie.” I gently lifted Ellie off my head as she trilled happily. I set her down between Keiko and I before turning to look over to Aria. She was looking at our trio with a look that could have been amusement or exasperation, but I wasn’t sure which it was.

I sighed, “Here’s the deal, Keiko and I have a secret and we were hoping that we could trust you to keep it.”

Aria nodded her head softly. “Unless it’s something that puts my people at risk, I have no problem keeping your confidence. I don’t think whatever you’re going to tell me is going to put my people in danger, so I wholeheartedly agree. I will keep your secret for you.”

Keiko spoke up after we got confirmation. “Here’s how it is, Steven and I are what are referred to as paired cultivators. Our cultivation bases are linked and when we fight together, we’re a lot stronger than normal cultivators of our level are. We can share qi back and forth and sometimes we can even talk mind to mind. We do something called Orbital Breathing…”

I took over for Keiko, because she seemed to not know where to go from there. “Basically, Orbital Breathing lets us pass qi back and forth so that we can purify all of the qi within ourselves. It’s similar to what you do yourself, but it’s usually more efficient.” I pointed down to where I had just set Ellie between Keiko and I. “Ellie eats the impurities that are expelled while we do our Orbital Breathing. It’s the best simulation to the natural accumulation of qi in the world that we can give her, without letting her go out on her own for multiple years.” I rubbed the ridge on Ellie’s head again which had her mewing softly in appreciation.

Much to my surprise, Aria seemed to be taking everything we said in stride. She shrugged, “I knew there was something going on between the two of you, but I figured it was just normal cultivator stuff. You two are obviously in a relationship and you were cultivating together or something. It doesn’t surprise me that you turned out to be more than that, but any way you slice it, you two are people who are doing your best to cultivate together and become more powerful. I have no problem with that, so feel free to go ahead and do your Orbital Breathing, or whatever it’s called.” She settled into a full lotus pose and closed her eyes. “While you two cultivate, I think I’ll do the same.”

We did just that, we set up our Centering Lotus and did our Orbital Breathing for about an hour. After that, we looked around at how small the safehouse was before deciding that sparring was a bad idea, so we settled back into Orbital Breathing for another hour in an effort to at least get something out of the rest of the day. At the end of the second hour, I looked down at Ellie and noticed that she looked larger than she had when we closed our eyes for Orbital Breathing. She gained at least a quarter of an inch in girth and two or three inches in length. Her wings looked fuller, like they could hold her aloft a lot easier now, but she was sleeping and I had to wait until the next day to find out that I was correct about that. She could now fly at head height all day if she needed to, and potentially much higher for a shorter period of time, but we rarely needed that, so we didn’t test it.

As we lay down to sleep, my mind flashed back to fight with the Indus tribe members and as I was going over the fight for the third time, I remembered something. I hadn’t noticed the earrings on the Indus tribe pair at first, but as I thought about it after the fight, I remembered that they’d been wearing those earrings the entire time. As I thought on it more, I realized that the earrings they were wearing were a match to the pair that Keiko and I were wearing. They were totems for accessing the Inheritance of the Eclipse. That explained why the couple was so tough, they were paired cultivators just like Keiko and I, but they had been through the Inheritance of the Eclipse, which was older and supposedly held much more powerful techniques than the Inheritance of the Lovers that Keiko and I had gone through.

The way they moved, despite being apart, it was like they were fighting with one mind, inhabiting two bodies. When I talked about it with Keiko later, she mentioned that while the man had been keeping me occupied, he’d been flicking out the other end of his chain to distract Keiko so that his partner could land slashes with her fingernails. I hadn’t even noticed that, instead having been wrapped up by him almost immediately. I felt ashamed of my performance in that fight, despite the fact that I had been able to immolate him after tricking him into thinking I’d given up. I knew that I could’ve done better in that fight if I’d only trained more. I resolved to redouble my training and keep struggling to advance my cultivation alongside Keiko as quickly as possible at that moment.

The next two weeks of traveling passed by without any excitement like the first day had been, it felt like we had gotten all of the journey’s excitement out in the first day of the trip. We knew that we were going to be wrong about it, but it was fun to talk about it like that. Exactly seventeen days after leaving Sun’s End, we reached the site of the Alchemists’ Grotto.

It was the best hidden safehouse that we had run into yet. The entrance was over one hundred feet up the cliff wall and it required crawling through over seventy-five feet of tunnel with numerous holes dotted throughout it that we eventually figured out would allow the inhabitants of the safehouse to pour qi through holes in the wall of the safehouse to blast qi into the entire tunnel leading up to it. This place was like a fortress and when we entered it, we saw that it was pretty big inside.

It was every bit of a hundred feet on a side with one tiny entrance that we had to crawl through on the one wall and opposite it was a massive set of golden doors with alchemical symbols and depictions of alchemical pots, pills, and powders. The room that we were in was comfortably appointed with tables and chairs and what appeared to be a sleeping space for half a dozen people. As Keiko, Aria, and Ellie got settled in, I walked over to inspect the giant golden doors.

As I studied the door, I eventually found some writing that, after discussing with Aria, we figured out meant “Only one may enter”. I sat down with the group to discuss our plan.

“We made it to the grotto. Are you both still okay with me going in there and testing my mettle?” I looked at Keiko and Aria while softly stroking the sleeping Ellie where she had crawled up into my lap.

Aria shrugged noncommittally, “It’s not my place to stop you from doing anything you want to do. As long as we end up helping the Moonrise Clan eventually, I’m good.”

Keiko stared me straight in the eyes for what felt like forever, but was probably closer to a minute. Seeing my resolve, she just smiled. “I want you to do this. I want you to go in there and get whatever award you’re going to get and gather up as much other stuff as you can from in there and then come back to us … come back to me. You and I both know that if you feel something going wrong with you, just send me a message and we’ll come beating through that door to come save you.” She leaned forward and rapped me on the forehead with her knuckles, not super hard, but hard enough that it did leave me rubbing where she did so for a second. “Rest up tonight and go in there rested tomorrow after breakfast. We don’t know how long you’re going to be in there, so we want to make sure that you have as much qi stored away as humanly possible before going in. We should cultivate for an extra hour after sparring tonight so that we make sure that you’re one hundred percent filled up with pure qi. I don’t know what kind of effect that’ll have on your alchemy, but I hope it’s a good one.”

I grinned and nodded. “Thanks for the votes of confidence you two, I’ll make sure to do my best in there tomorrow.” I gently passed Ellie over to Keiko’s lap before standing up. “Who’s hungry? I’m thinking I’ll bust out some Blazing Elk for the night, as a special treat.”

Keiko groaned while Aria grinned while rubbing her hands together excitedly.

“I’ve only ever had Blazing Elk once! I’m so excited to see what you can do with it, Steven.” She seemed genuinely excited while Keiko was obviously displeased with my decision.

I grinned even wider, “Aria you’re in for a treat, I’m going to introduce you to my specialty, roast Blazing Elk with a side of Zephyr Rice balls. It’s served with an Aqua Vitae sauce and Iron Nettles.” Keiko groaned even louder before hiding her face behind her hands in disgust.

Aria didn’t seem to care about Keiko’s reaction. “That sounds wonderful Steven, I look forward to trying it.”

I have to say, I think that was the best batch of Blazing Elk ribs I had ever made, up to that point of course.

The following morning was like any other: I got up, made breakfast, ate said breakfast with everybody, and then cultivated the qi from breakfast with Keiko. We didn’t spar, which was a bit unusual, but that was because we wanted to ensure that my qi levels were absolutely topped off before heading into whatever kind of test or trial was behind the massive golden doors.

I stood with my back to the golden doors as I took in the scene in front of me. Ellie was around Aria’s shoulders. She was standing behind a nervous looking Keiko. Keiko stood merely three feet in front of me and she looked more nervous that I’d ever seen her. She was wringing her hands and running her hand through her hair and rubbing the nape of her neck like she had an itch, even though we both knew she didn’t.

She looked me dead in the eye before speaking. “Tell me the plan one more time.”

I smiled, “Go into the trial, kick the trial’s butt, and gather every last bit of alchemical stuff I can within the rules set by Old Ironbellows master… last but not least, come back out victorious.” She waves her hand as if to say ‘go on’, so I continued. “If something goes wrong, I’m supposed to message you immediately. In that case, you and Aria will find a way to get to me, whether it be through the wall or through the doors.”

Keiko stopped nodding when I finished before mumbling under her breath, “good,” before surging forward to pull me into the tightest hug she could. After a few seconds I actually felt a few of my ribs creak so I patted her on the back to get her to loosen her grip, but she refused, shaking her head vehemently as she clung to me.

After a minute she finally released her grip before grabbing my chin and staring at me one more time in the eyes. “Be smart, be brave, and come back to me… come back to us.” Her voice broke as she pushed me toward the golden doors reluctantly. “Now get in there before I change my mind.”

Aria stepped up and pulled Keiko into an embrace, which, in addition to helping calm her down, also doubled as a means of stopping her from charging through the doors once I had them open. Aria and I had discussed that being an issue the night before, so we figured that as long as Aria didn’t let go, Keiko wouldn’t be able to slip away from her, at least not until I was able to get into the trial and have the doors close behind me.

I smiled and waved back at the group. Ellie waved her tail at me before writhing her way around Keiko’s shoulders in an effort to comfort her. The look of pain on her face broke my heart, but I knew I had to get going.

I waved once more to the group, doing my best to keep my emotions in, before turning to address the massive golden doors. I took a few seconds to stare at the doors in appreciation of their craftsmanship. I could tell from how intricate some of the scrollwork was and how fine the lines were that this store had either been crafted by master metallurgist or by a master of metal qi, possibly both. In particular, the alchemical symbols on the door were the most intricate of all the ornamentation. The flames, pills, powder bottles, and alchemical pots were all detailed so well that I thought maybe there might be more to them than simple decoration. The moment I stepped within five feet of the doors bright red letters appeared on the golden doors that eventually faded down to become dim enough to be legible. I took a closer look and found that the trial had already begun.

The red letters spelled out a question:

What is the heart of alchemy? Touch the correct answer on the door to be permitted entry.

I hadn’t anticipated being tested to even get into the grotto, but it seemed that maybe this was just how things were going to be. I wasn’t totally sure if this was actually part of the trial on second thought. This was probably just the test to see if you were worthy of entering the grotto, let alone accepting the trial. I took a few moments to consider the answer before it dawned on me. Without hesitation I reached up and tapped on the large symbol depicting the flames.

The reaction was immediate. The red text disappeared and the door started to shudder as it opened. As the doors opened, I turned back to look at the group I was leaving behind and found that I was instead looking at a stone wall less than two feet behind me. I guessed that the trial of the alchemists’ grotto didn’t want anyone interfering from the outside.

I felt a brief flash of panic before I heard my grandfather’s voice in my head, which calmed me down significantly. “Panic helps no one, it’s killed more people than any blade. All panic does is make you stupid and slow. Channel that energy into something productive like perception and you’ll always be ready for what comes.” He was full of sayings like that and I was inclined to believe that he was usually right. I took a few moments to collect myself before starting through the hazy opening between the golden doors.

After I passed through the haze, I found myself in what could only be called an alchemical wonderland. There were thousands, if not tens of thousands, of planters in the enormous room I found myself in. Each one of them appeared to be under a very particular set of growing conditions. Directly in front of me I saw a planter full of flowers that appeared to actually be on fire. Their plot was being heated by what appeared to be a pipe that was spraying pure fire qi toward the plants. Directly next to that plot of flowers was what appeared to be a very normal carrot plot. There was nothing special about it except for the fact that there was a small amount of water qi being sprayed on it as a superfine mist as I watched. It never stopped as long as I could see it, so I guessed that those weren’t normal carrots, but rather some kind of water qi laden variant.

The room was full of marbles such as those, but the thing that interested me the most was the raised silver dais with a golden flame seated atop it opposite the entrance. I heard the doors behind me shut and as soon as they did, a line of golden light sprang out from them and up toward the golden flame. I took that as a sign, before following the golden path to the inch, doing my best not to interfere with any of the obscure mechanisms being used to grow these plants optimally. I knew that I would need a very specific type of spatial storage device to store all of the alchemical ingredients I would be taking before leaving this place. I would definitely be leaving at least one of everything, just to make sure I wasn’t the reason that any of these things went extinct.

The room was as deep as it was wide, so it took me a minute or two to walk all the way toward where the raised silver dais was. As soon as I got within twenty feet of it a loud voice boomed out. “Aspirant, please step forward so we can determine if you are worthy to take part in the trial.”

Before the silver dais a circle made out of silver light appeared.

I hesitated for a moment; I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be gathering ingredients before going in, but I figured that seeing if I qualified for the trial would be better than going into the situation half-nocked. I took two large confident steps into the silver circle of light and as soon as I stepped into the circle, lines of writing appeared directly in front of my face.

Age: 18

Alchemical Training: No formal training, in possession of one book on alchemy (unfinished).

Unique fire qi signature: Detected

The silver circle of light I was standing in turned gold and before I had any time to react, I felt myself being sucked somewhere else. After a couple minutes of being tossed around like a cocktail shaker, I was suddenly deposited in a room containing only six things. There was a basic alchemical pot, which appeared to be of the most basic variety, a mortar and pestle, and four plots of alchemical ingredients.

To my relief, each of the four plots were labeled. The first plot of ingredients was one of sharp looking, dark green, blades of grass. Their placard described them as Razorgrass. The next planter, if it could be called that, was a small field of rocks. Each of the rocks had a single flower growing out of the top of them. The placard called them Rock Buds. The third plot was actually a plant I recognized. It was called Healer’s Touch and I knew that it was used for making salves to reduce pain. The large green and blue leaves would be crushed into a poultice that would be applied directly to the wound site. The final plot was full of tiny mushrooms, most of which were red and black, but there were a couple purple ones scattered within. The placard described them as Deathcap Sprouts.

It took me a few minutes to inspect each of the plants before I walked over to where I noticed a small book had appeared on a pedestal near the alchemical pot. I picked up the small book to the first page. It was labeled “Alchemical Journal” with Steven Roh written below it in the author’s spot. I wasn’t even surprised, this trial was able to tell how old I was, how much alchemical training I had, and that I had a unique type of fire qi… of course it knew my name.

The next page had a prompt for my next trial:

Produce the most effective healing medicine you can using only the materials found in this room. From the time of you reading this, to the end of this part of the trial, you have two hours.

I was relatively certain that at least one of the plants would be a trap. Potentially two, if I didn’t figure out how to properly work with the Deathcap Sprouts. Deciding that I had no time to waste, I walked over and plucked a single blade of Razorgrass.

I ran the edge of it along my fingertip and found that it actually cut a perfect line. These things were incredibly sharp. I searched through the field of Razorgrass until I found a specimen that was approximately eight inches in length and an inch in width. I plucked that blade immediately and decided to use it as my knife for this challenge, assuming I needed one. I spent a couple of minutes trying to analyze what would be the most optimal method of combining the plants, but eventually I figured out that this challenge was all about instincts, not knowledge. So, I decided to let my instincts guide me.

The first thing I did was place a small charge of Inferno qi inside the basic alchemical pot. It shuddered for a moment before stabilizing. When I looked inside it, I saw that my Inferno qi was being evenly distributed along the bottom of the pot. I immediately set out gathering ingredients I thought I’d need. I grabbed the largest Deathcap Sprout, the only blue Rock Bud flower, and a bundle of the smallest Healer’s Touch plants.

I set about processing the plants I had gathered. The first thing I worked on was the Deathcap Sprout, which was almost twelve inches tall, its cap was nearly that wide. I put my cooking prep skills to use and handily dismantled the enormous mushroom using the Razorgrass blade. After that, I decided to grab a small specimen of the same species, but as soon as I touched the small mushroom, my hand went numb, so I left it behind.

Next, I took a look at the Rock Bud flower. It wasn’t very big, merely two inches in diameter. What it lacked in size, it made up for in color. The blue of the flower seemed to be seeping into everything nearby, including my hand when I left it next to the flower for too long. Something told me that this was the trap material. This flower was too potent, it would overpower anything else, overwriting their potentially beneficial effects. I set the flower aside, where it couldn’t taint any of the other ingredients. There was a chance I’d still end up using it, but I doubted it. I diced up the Healer’s Touch plants like I’d seen the healer in town do a thousand times. Following that, I ground it into a paste using the mortar and pestle.

In the end, I had two piles of ingredients, but I felt like something was missing so I went over and grabbed the largest blade of Razorgrass, which had lost some of its knife-like qualities. It was much softer and not nearly as sharp as the blade I’d been using to cut up the rest of the ingredients. I julienned the large blade of grass and set it in a pile beside the Deathcap Sprout and Healer’s Touch that I’d already worked with.

I decided to start with heating the mushroom, seeing as it had the most body of any of the ingredients I had. I added it all at once to the alchemical pot, making sure to spread it evenly across the bottom of the pot. I gently settled my fingers on the lid of the pot and sent my qi seeking inward. I could feel the pieces of mushroom being cooked and when it felt like they were about halfway to where I wanted them, I used a thread of qi to pull them aside and huddled them just under the lid, which I raised off.

I was going to add in the Healer’s Touch next, but on second thought pushed it and the Razorgrass in together. Despite being different in texture, I had a feeling that the Razorgrass was a lot tougher than it looked, so it would probably take a similar amount of time to the Healer’s Touch. I focused my Inferno qi on the pair of ingredients, doing my utmost to avoid overcooking the Deathcap Sprout.

A few short minutes later, I felt like it was time to add the partially cooked Deathcap Sprout to the mixture, so I gently settled it into the roiling mixture of Healer’s Touch and Razorgrass. I did my best to swirl my Inferno qi in a whirlpool like motion for a while. As I inspected my handiwork about fifteen minutes later, I felt that it was time to finish the mixture.

Rather than pulling the lid off and pouring the mixture into a set of vials that had appeared while I wasn’t looking to get it off the heat, instead I decided to take advantage of my Inferno qi’s unique trait. I took a deep breath before pulling all of the Inferno qi that was in the alchemical pot back into myself with a single, tremendous, effort. The Inferno qi leaving the pot so suddenly left the pot surprisingly cool and when I opened the pot to look at the mixture inside, I was greeted by a pool of scintillating blue liquid.

I gently poured the liquid into the waiting vials and waited for the verdict of the trial. I was proud of how I had acquitted myself here. I hadn’t burned anything or caused any explosions, so had done better than I had actually expected, especially considering how aggressive my Inferno qi could be.

If I hadn’t been so careful with my control of Inferno qi, I could’ve incinerated the entire concoction without any time to recover. I was almost surprised how easily the control came to me. Then again, I’d been cooking my entire life and using fire and wind qi together since I awakened as a Body cultivator, so maybe it was just luck. Honestly, I genuinely hoped it wasn’t luck, I hoped it was talent, but I wouldn’t know which until I completed all of the trials ahead of me.

I heard a soft chime, but there was no visual representation of what had just occurred. After looking around the room for a minute or so, I pulled out the journal had been provided and flipped to the page dedicated to this trial.

Trial One: Healing Concoction

Overall Rating: A - Exceptional

Noteworthy Choices: Use of Razorgrass as a cutting implement - choosing the least poisonous Deathcap Sprout

Potential Improvements: Adding a small amount of pulped Razorgrass near the end of the alchemical process would increase healing efficiency by five percent.

As soon as you finish reading this, you will be transported to the next trial.

Just as the journal said, the second I finished the last line of text I felt the floor beneath my feet disappear. I fell into the void for a few moments before being gently settled down in another room very similar to the first one I had entered.

The basic trials went on in the same pattern for an additional four trials. Each one allowed for two hours of ingredient inspection and manipulation before the final product was due. The second trial was making a water breathing potion, the third trial was creating a potion to nullify general toxins, the fourth trial was to create the deadliest poison possible with the ingredients provided, the fifth overall trial was to create a potion that would increase its drinker’s speed for at least ten minutes.

In a massive surprise to myself, I received an “A” rating on all of the trials and the “Needs Improvement” sections of my reviews were always something incredibly minor, usually only increasing the efficiency of the final product by two or three percent, the initial five percent for my healing concoction was the largest increase.

After the fifth trial I was deposited back in the massive greenhouse room where I took a few moments to center myself again. I knew that I was almost done with this series of trials and I wanted to make the best possible impression. As I looked around at my surroundings, I saw that all of the things I had created in my initial trials had been provided to me, so I sucked each of them up into my spatial ring with a wave of my hand. I heard a familiar chime come from my journal. I pulled it out from under my arm, I’d had it there since the end of the previous trial, and opened it up. As I opened the small book, the pages fluttered until they revealed the page following the page for the last trial I had done.

The next thing I read was painfully simple, but I knew that it would be incredibly worthwhile if I could figure out the best way to pull it off.

Final trial: Make anything you want with the plants or other alchemical materials you can find in this room. Your time limit is twenty-four hours.

I looked down at the journal in shock. How was I supposed to figure out how to make something fantastic with all of these ingredients to choose from? It was different in the previous trials when I was provided with anywhere from four to ten different ingredients and was told the goal I was aiming for. I knew that at least some combination of the ingredients in the trial room would have to have some sort of link to the proposed request, so I had a basis for what I was doing. Now that I was on my own for figuring out what to make and how to make it, I realized that I was flying blind.

I took the next hour to inspect as many of the plants as I could that were available to me. I spent a shorter period of time checking out the non-plant-based ingredients, but most of them felt self-explanatory. I couldn’t let myself get overwhelmed, because if that happened there was no way I was going to make anything worth anything. Luckily for me, now that I’d been through the previous five trials, I knew how to hunt for the ingredients that might be useful for any plan I might come up with. I found that each of the plots had the name of the plant, or some other kind of identifier, as well as a list of ways that each of them could be used in an alchemical concoction. That was a lot more than I was given in the other trials, but I guess that made sense because otherwise I would have no idea what any of them did, though I guess that the trials themselves told me a bit about what those items were able to be used for.

I had an idea forming, but I knew that it would be the most difficult thing I’d made today. Actually, strike that, it was probably the most difficult thing I’d ever made in my entire life, including my grandfather’s famous pho. Before moving on with that plan, I decided to take a look at what was available before making a final decision. Deciding that time was of the essence, I got to work.

I could tell there were thousands, if not tens of thousands, of different tinctures and concoctions that I could create with nothing more than what was found in this room. Seeing as I had been allowed to keep the results of all my previous tests, I thought mostly about what would be beneficial to Keiko, Ellie, and I in the future.

I wasn’t going to make some kind of healing potion or a potion to make someone stronger for a brief period of time. Instead, I was trying to think of something to make that would leave a lasting effect on our bodies in a positive way. After thinking on that for a couple of minutes, I realized that I hadn’t even seen the pot that I would be using for this test, so I headed up to the front of the room, by the silver dais, to take a look at it. The pot I was provided didn’t look special in any way, in fact it looked even more basic than the pot that I had used for the previous trials. It had no ornamentation of any kind on it, it was made of plain black stone of some type with zero ornamentation. Even the pot’s lid was as basic as the rest of it, the handle for the lid, which would usually be the most ornate part of the entire pot was a simple black knob, like you would find on a drawer of some type.

One noteworthy thing I did notice about it was that when I picked it up it was significantly heavier than I had anticipated, but I chalked it up to being made of some cheap material was heavier than was necessary. The pot was about half the size of a soup pot, it looked like it would hold approximately one gallon if filled to the very top, so that meant that I had approximately half a gallon worth to work with at any one time, to allow room for the ingredients to combine inside the pot.

I looked over to the right side of the room and saw that there was a small workstation with basic alchemical tools like knives, beakers, and vials for me. Having to figure out how to create vials in the second trial hadn’t been easy, if I hadn’t seen lightning strike the sand near the lake closest to Roh City I never would’ve figured it out. Intense heat from Inferno qi was enough to transform the superfine sand into crude glass that was tough enough to hold my concoction.

I thought about all of things that I’d even heard of that I might want to make and I kept coming back to the Foundation Building pills that Keiko and I had taken from the first level of the vault in the Inheritance of the Lovers, those pills had really set us out on the right foot, cultivation-wise, because our cultivations grew significantly faster than even Roderigo and Melody, who followed the same training and cultivating schedule as we did. I decided to make something similar to that for Ellie, I know she was a magical beast, but she was cultivating just like we were, so it made sense to me to make something to make her stronger so she would grow stronger, faster.

I only had twenty-four hours to work with, so I got started as soon as I made my mind up. I headed over to where I’d felt the strongest chill in the air and found in found an ice blue flower called the Tundra Lily, its description said that it was exceptionally useful for developing water attributed concoctions. I figure that since it was so cold, there must be some other something else going on to make it worthwhile. I made a note of where were so I’d know where to find them when I needed to retrieve them later.

The next item that I found that tripped my fancy came from a small tree. It was the acorn from an Ironwood tree, its description said that it was full of more metal than wood qi, so I figured that I could burn off the little bit of wood qi that was there and use it to purify the metal qi inside if I was careful. Following that, I started looking for things that I knew would enhance growth, those turned out to be significantly harder to find. I spent almost eight hours before I found the three that items that I figured would be the best options.

The first was called the Renewing Bud, it was a flower that would bloom and wilt all in the same day, only to do the same thing the next day. I figured that with an ability like that, its potential to help things grow would be incredible, so I made sure to mark that for use. Next was something that I felt exceptionally lucky to find, it was called in Arctic Rose and it was chockablock full of both metal and water qi. Finally, I looked for something simple. I grabbed a basic grade universal beast core from a shelf that was full of them over on the far side of the building. I wasn’t sure if people usually put beast cores in their alchemical concoctions, but I figured that if it was in the room then it must have some place there. Anyway, I figured that if I didn’t end up using it, I’d just put it back where I found it.

I debated grabbing a pair of water and metal cores instead of the universal core, but something told me that unless I want to overwhelm the concoction, there was a better chance of the universal working than the other two.

Once I figured out everything that I wanted to use for my final project, instead of jumping right in to work on it, instead I took two hours to rest and recuperate while simultaneously pondering the best course of action to produce what I was trying to make. I knew from a couple failed attempts during my previous trials that the way you combined ingredients was as important as the ingredients you combined.

Case in point, I had overcooked the ingredients for the poison in one of my trials and actually ended up making an antidote to said poison because the poison had time to mellow out as it cooked low and slow. I figured out that the poison I was making needed to be cooked as fast as possible, damaging the structure of the plant as little as possible on the way. After I finished resting and recuperating, I figured out that I had fourteen hours remaining before the end of the test. I only hoped that it was enough, because I’d never made anything as complicated as what I was planning on making now. I gathered all the ingredients up, making sure to take at least some of the conditions around them if the plants were still alive when I took them.

I laid out my ingredients like a chef would, I treated the Arctic Rose as the protein, seeing as it was nearly twelve inches in size and also happened to be the core of what I figured would make the most powerful growth augmentation mixture for Ellie. I sent a ball of Inferno qi into the base of the plain black alchemical pot and found that it was incredibly easy to manipulate my qi through it. When I went to put the lid on top, I was actually able to somewhat see what was inside through it, which was strange considering before I put any qi inside the pot it was totally opaque. I figured that there was probably something more going on with the pot I had, but I didn’t have time to waste trying to figure out what that was right then. Maybe if I finished early, I would be able to spend some time checking it out, but I didn’t get the impression that was going to happen.

The first thing I did was remove all the petals from the Arctic Rose and gently place them in a pile beside the pot. As for the center of the flower and the stem, I ground those up with the mortar and pestle and left that paste to the side. I treated all the flowers the same, separating the petals and grinding up the heads of the flowers and the stems. Something I did that I figured it out later was unusual was that I added all of the stems and heads of the flowers into the same bowl with the mortar and pestle. By the end it was a homogenous greenish-brown mixture with hints of gray and white in it. For the Ironwood Acorn, all I did to was score it with a knife where I would have cut it into eighths if I’d cut all the way through. I did score it quite deeply, so I was hoping that when it got hot enough inside the pot it would burst and disperse the metal qi that was inside it after burning off the wood qi that was surrounding it.

The only ingredient I didn’t know what to do with was the universal beast core, At first, I wanted to grind it up, but I figured that would be a waste, as I’d be wasting all of the contained energy of the core by breaking it apart. I figured that inspiration will strike me during the alchemical process and I would know what to do with it. If they didn’t happen, it was just a core that I’d put back on the shelf, so I wasn’t really worried about it.

Once I had all my preparations complete, I got to work. First, I added the flower stalk and head paste to the bottom of the bowl, right by the ports where the Inferno qi was coming in. I knew that a paste like that would take quite a while to burn, so I felt it would be safe down there. Next, I took the Ironwood Acorn and placed it directly over the center flame port, leaving it blocked off, minus a very small opening around it. That would leave me with only six other ports for my Inferno qi to fill the pot, but I knew that it was important to make sure that the Ironwood Acorn burned off all traces of wood qi before the mixture was finished. After that, I added the rest of the ingredients besides the beast core, making sure to spread the flower petals as evenly around the pot as I could while simultaneously making sure to coat each of them equally with my Inferno qi.

I took great care to sculpt to the Inferno qi to keep it from incinerating the flower petals, I had an inkling that they would need more gentle heat to draw out their true essence, so I actually ended up floating them up near the top of the pot with the gentlest Inferno qi I had available, though that took an entire two jets to maintain, so I knew that I would have to be careful with the rest of them. I let the mixture work for the next four hours like that, making sure to keep my Inferno qi as tightly controlled as humanly possible while waiting for the Ironwood Acorn to finally break. At the four-hour mark, I intensified the Inferno qi coming from center jet and after two minutes, I heard the first subtle cracking noise before a much louder crack started to come from the bottom of the pot. It was then that I had my moment of eureka and quickly grabbed the universal beast core, which about was about the size of a soup dumpling, before quickly opening the lid of the pot and dropping it down through the flower petals to rest on top of the Ironwood Acorn.

Less than ten seconds after adding the core, I heard a loud popping noise and through my, admittedly foggy, view through the top of the pot I saw the entire mixture go silver with metal qi before the universal beast core absorbed all of that qi before shattering into silver and blue dust. It seemed my hunch was correct, the universal beast core absorbed all of the metal attributed qi that was inside the pot and in doing so enriching what it took in with all of the qi that was stored within it. I could tell that something was off about my mixture, there was a process that I didn’t think about doing and I knew that it was important for me to figure it out. I quickly racked my brain, there had to be something I was missing!

As I was thinking back to the Foundation Building pills again it dawned on me. I had never actually made a pill before. I had made powders and tinctures and poultices, but never a pill. I thought back to the few times I’ve actually been given pills in my life and I only had a few times to choose from. Once was when I got very sick as a child and my grandfather had begged his friend the City Lord for an antidote pill to make me well again. My grandfather had cut the pill in half and given me them separately, over the course of two days. Those pills had layers to them. I would never forget the colors, purple on the outside, green toward the middle, and a shockingly white core.

The next one was right before my grandfather passed; he had given me a pill so that I would be able to make a good showing at the tournament that didn’t end up happening. I ended up taking that pill before my final martial arts class, because I knew that the teacher would pit me against Keiko, or one of the better fighters in class and I wanted to make sure I acquitted myself well. That pill had been layered as well, brown on the outside, blue on the inside, and again with a shockingly white core.

I figured out what I had to do. I knew it was going to be difficult, but I figured it would be worth it. The first thing I did was gather all of the petals that were still floating at the top of the pot as close to the center of the pot as possible, they floated gently over the powders and paste at the bottom of the pot. Using all of the flame jets at once, leaving the rest of the ingredients alone for just a few seconds, I incinerated all of the petals in a flash. When I allowed my Inferno qi to go back to heating the powders and paste at the bottom of the pot I was greeted by a beautiful white and pink powder that matched the beautiful colors of the flowers I’d used to create it. I knew that I was going to turn that powder into the core of the pill, so I used two of the flame jets to slowly compress them into a pill shape.

After a few minutes, I realized that I had to many ingredients to make just one pill, so I adjusted on the fly and ended up making six instead. It took all of my concentration to maintain the six qi threads that I used to float the six pill cores above the roiling heat below. After that, I worked on separating the paste mixture into what would become the next layer of the pill. After separating the mixture into six distinct sections, I managed to congeal them around the pill cores. They would finally become one with a flex of effort, now needing twelve qi threads, rather than the six I’d been using before. At that point I thought I was at my limit; I had never done more than twelve qi threads and I still needed to condense the powder into the final two layers of the pill.

I wasn’t going to be able to make the pills I wanted to, and I didn’t have enough time to make something else, so I was going to fail the final trial…

As I was starting to panic, I remembered something I had heard a thousand times before, not for my grandpa this time, but instead from Keiko. She had always told me that because of my personality I always acted like less than I was, and that she wanted me to be myself, not some diminished version of myself. She wanted me to throw away the mask that I put on for everyone else’s benefit, to instead be the radiant source of light that she had fallen in love with. She added that last part more recently, but she said that she’d always been saying it in her head, so I figured it was fair to add in there. I decided to follow her advice and the results that followed were staggering.

I unclenched my jaw and smiled wide for all the world to see. I rolled my shoulders and cracked my back before moving from the lotus pose, I’d been in before, behind the pot to a lotus pose with the pot directly in between my legs. It was actually a modified lotus pose, because I used the bottoms of my feet to provide the flame to the pot so that I could use my hands for more delicate matters. I flexed my will and was astounded at the results. I felt at first one qi thread from each finger join the fray, then another, and then another. At the end, I had fifty-two qi threads working all at once inside that pot and they made quick work of preparing the paste mixture and individual powder mixtures that I hadn’t even considered taking apart until then and forming them all into loose pill shapes roughly the size of large berries.

I was astounded at what I’d just done, but I knew that I couldn’t let that emotion take over the thinking part of my brain. Instead, I needed to knuckle down and work with what I had. I moved the pills down to the exact midpoint of the pot and with a thought I placed three fingers from each hand on the top of the pot lid and figured out what made this pot special, or at least part of it. I poured even more Inferno qi down into the pot lid and as I looked around the rim of the pot, I saw that six additional flame jets had appeared. With their help, I was able to superheat the pills from both sides so that I didn’t need to rotate them as much. I thought that I would rotate them slightly so that I made sure they were cooked evenly and when it was time for the final compression, I poured every single ounce of qi I had in my body, including as much qi as I could gather from the area around me into it.

The little black pot wasn’t even warm on the outside, but I knew that on the inside it was a hellish Inferno, no pun intended. Okay, maybe pun intended, sue me. I knew that the final pill compression was going to be the hardest part, so I took a deep breath and remember who I was doing this for, it was for my little girl, she wasn’t my daughter by blood, but I loved her like she was. There was nothing I wouldn’t do for her. With a final minute long pulse of the most intense Inferno qi I had ever unleashed, I actually ran out of qi for the first time in my life.

I was flabbergasted, with my enlarged lower core, I had never run out of qi before. Not even as a Body cultivator. When everyone else was struggling to produce more than a couple blasts of flame or some other element, I was able to do it all day. That made my grandfather very happy, but it wasn’t a good thing as far as my classmates were concerned, besides Keiko. I was terrified that the pills I had made wouldn’t be done and I’d have wasted all my trial time and all those of those materials.

A second later I heard a gentle bumping noise. I opened my eyes and what I saw through the pot lid staggered belief, so I ripped it off. A gold light emerged from the pot and out floated my six perfect silver and blue pills. They were each roughly the size of my fingertip and they looked incredibly tightly packed and shiny with a glossy sheen that I had never seen on a pill before, besides the Foundation Building pills from the vault. It was then I knew that I had succeeded, but I didn’t know how well then that I had succeeded.

The six pills rose up from the pot, spinning as they were buoyed by golden light. They continued circling until they were nearly twenty-five feet in the air. A few seconds later the black pot rose up into the air beside them and as I watched its plain black appearance disappeared. Instead of plain black it was now resplendent with gold and silver, rubies and sapphires. Each of the places I had placed my fingers on its lid I had found instinctively, because each of them were inlaid gems to allow the injection of qi. There were twenty-two spots for qi to enter the pot and I had used all of them. I actually scrunched my feet up so that I could use both my heel and foot meridians on the two largest ports on the bottom. It was almost like that pot was made for me, because very few people will be able to produce that much qi from their feet and hands at the same time.

The pills and pot floated in the air for over an hour, during which time I was unable to do much as I was out a qi for the first time. Instead of freaking out, I focused on the feeling of emptiness and worked on spinning up as much qi as I possibly could. Due to the abnormally high levels of ambient qi in the area, I was able to get seventy-five percent full of qi before the pills and pot lowered back down to the ground in front of me. As the pot settled onto the ground it went back to its featureless black appearance, which I thought was kind of interesting. Most alchemists I had met, especially the greasy one who was related to Jim Roh, were all about the ostentatious things in life. They expected other people to see them as greater than they were because of their skills, but this plain black pot actually suited me quite well. I liked to think that I was more subtle than that, despite the fact that the woman I loved was everything but.

As I sat there, pondering why the pot would make itself appear as less than it was, a loud booming voice filled the room.

“Steven Roh, your final results are as follows:

Trial One: A

Trial Two: A

Trial Three: A

Trial Four: A

Trial Five: A

Final Trial: S

“Due to your exemplary performance, you have been chosen as the true successor to this Inheritance, the Inheritance of the Pot! All of the items held within these walls are yours to take and this Inheritance will be closed down in twenty-four hours. In addition to the ingredients that you have been gifted, you will also receive the pot you see before you. It is no ordinary alchemical pot, rather it is a soul treasure that I poured every ounce of myself into before my death.

“As long as you are in the possession of the pot, I will be able to aid you in a number of ways, primarily in the art of cultivation as well as, and more importantly, on the path to becoming a master alchemist. My boy, you have a wonderful future ahead of you and with my assistance I believe you could become the greatest alchemist of this age, or any of the previous ages!”

The booming voice faded, though it sounded distinctively excited as it did so. As I watched, golden light appeared from all around the room and poured into the pot before me. It took nearly two minutes for all of the golden light to finish coalescing, but what happened after that was worth the wait.

I heard of a voice inside my head that I could tell came from the pot. It sounded just as excited as the booming voice above had. “Hello Steven, you can call me Sensei. There’s a lot that I have to teach you. I hope you’re ready for the ride, because when I’m done with you there won’t be an alchemist on this planet that can contend with you.”

For a second, I debated acting aloof, or subdued, but then I figured that if there was ever a time to be excited… this was one of them. There was no one around to judge me besides the pot and I didn’t think it was going to do that.

I grinned, “I’m happy to have you around Sensei, I hope we can have a long and beneficial relationship.” I bowed at the waist, because I was sitting, to the pot.

“That’s the spirit, now please tell me more about yourself. I need to know what I’m working with here. Don’t hold anything back, I need to know if there’s anything unusual about you or your cultivation before I can assist you. Based on the fact that you were actually able to finish an expert grade pill as a Brain cultivator, I know that there’s something unusual about your lower core, but I don’t know what it is.”

My grin from before was still plastered to my face and it only grew wider. “I have a significantly larger Lower core than most people. Until today, I’ve never actually emptied it. As you said, I am a Brain cultivator, I practice paired cultivation with my soon-to-be wife, Keiko. I’ve had access to all six elements since I was a Heart cultivator. I had access to Fire and Wind qi as a Body cultivator.”

Before I could continue, Sensei interrupted me. “What do you mean, ‘six types of qi’? There are eight types of qi.”

I looked at the pot like something was wrong with it. “I’m sorry Sensei, but there are only six types of qi. Water, fire, earth, metal, wood, and wind. That’s it.”

Sensei burst out laughing in my head, which I thought would be more annoying than it turned out to be, but it was actually rather subdued when I realized how humorous he felt this was. “My dear boy, as a paired cultivator the last two types of qi that you don’t know about are the most important ones. You’re missing light and dark qi and without those it’s nearly impossible to advance past the realm of Duke cultivators as a set of paired cultivators. Also, I don’t know what you’re talking about because I can feel that there is a little bit of light and dark qi inside you already, which doesn’t just happen naturally. Did you eat any strange pills, flora, or fauna in the last year or so?”

I immediately knew where the light and dark qi he was talking about came from. “I took a strange Foundation Building pill back in the Inheritance of the lovers, my partner did as well. I noticed that we were much better at cultivating after that, but I’m wondering if maybe it’s because of the so-called light and dark qi.”

I could hear Sensei nodding, which I realize was kind of weird when I think about it now. “That’s exactly it, once your body is truly in balance, or least close to it, your cultivation rate will skyrocket. Why didn’t anyone ever tell you about light and dark qi? Did you not have a town elder who made sure everyone understood all the types of qi? This is pretty rudimentary stuff.”

I shook my head, “We had people to teach us about the types of qi, but light and dark were never mentioned. We were always told that there were only six types of qi and that we had to make sure that we focused on one of them if we wanted to become strong, though I’m starting to think that maybe being more balanced between the qi types is the best way to become strong.”

“As for the balance thing, you’re exactly correct. The more balanced the qi inside your body is, the stronger you’ll be. As for the fact that the knowledge of light and dark qi has been lost to the world, or at least I assume it has been. I can’t say I’m surprised, they’re incredibly dangerous, though I can say that I’m disappointed. I wonder what type of catastrophe had to have happened for the people of this world to, as a unit, decide to give up the use of two types of qi. It must’ve been something horrific, but it hadn’t happened yet when I made this place, so I have no idea what could’ve happened. What year is it?”

“I don’t think the number I have can help you, because it’s the 140th year of Emperor Li’s reign, but I’m pretty sure you’re much older than that.”

I heard Sensei sigh, “You’d be correct. It was the year 12,000 the last I knew it, which based on the counter you guys are using now… something must have happened to erase any trace of the old Empire. But let’s not let this get us down, I have a new lease on life through you and I’m excited to travel alongside you and teach you everything I know. Your partner is a very lucky woman, because while I wasn’t a paired cultivator myself, my son and his wife were and I did a ton of research on their behalf to make sure that they were able to become as strong as possible. Hold on, did you say you were in the Inheritance of the lovers?”

I chuckled, “Yeah, I did. Why do you ask?”

Sensei roared with laughter, even louder than before, and it did hurt this time. “That’s the name my son and his wife were going to go with when they created their inheritance as Emperor level cultivators. It seems fate has shined upon you, because the pills you took were created by me. You’re even luckier than I thought you were, because those were Emperor grade pills and with their help you and your partner are on your way to becoming the most powerful beings on this island, if not the entire area around.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that, the fact that I had run into not one, but two inheritances in my life and was headed toward a third, it was almost too much. Now learning that the alchemical pot I was going to get to use also contained the soul of an Emperor, or greater, level cultivator who just so happened to be the father/father-in-law of the people who founded the first Inheritance I had gone into… I had never really believed in fate, but at this point there was obviously something, or someone, pushing Keiko and I along this path and I only hoped that we were able to handle it. No matter what happened, I knew that with Keiko, Ellie, and Sensei by my side we would be able to solve any problem that came our way.

As I was stunned into silence, Sensei spoke up again. “All right, so I’m going to need you to pack up all of the ingredients in here, because this place is going to collapse in twenty-three and a half and I don’t want to be here when that happens.”

I took a deep breath before responding. “I don’t have a storage device big enough to carry everything here, let alone something that would allow all of these mechanisms to stay in place to keep the plants in perfect shape. Is there something in here I can use to take them with me?”

“Of course, the silver dais behind you is actually a very special spatial storage container. All you have to do is sit on it and you should be able to draw the entire construct that is the Alchemists’ Grotto into it. Then all you have to do is pull out the dais and sit on it and you’ll be able to enter this room again to get your ingredients. It’s a little bit less convenient than a normal spatial storage device, but it can also be better because it’s actually a place you can go, rather than just something you reach your hand into and pull things out of. Don’t forget to use a blood bond on it though, because otherwise you won’t be able to get back inside.”

I stood up and carried the pot with me as I hopped up to the top of the silver dais. “Thanks for the advice, I’ll make sure to blood bond it now.” I cut the pad of my thumb and dripped blood onto the silver dais as I sat down while pushing a thread of qi behind it. A second later, I felt a connection to the dais and immediately figure out worked. It was much simpler than I thought. All I had to do was will for the room to fold inside the dais and it would happen. I also learned that I could make the dais as small as a three-foot square, which was still really big, so I had to figure out how to carry it.

I decided to ask Sensei about it. “How am I supposed to carry around a three-foot square piece of silver all the time? Is there some way I can make it smaller or carry it some other way?”

He chuckled, “Don’t worry, once everything is collected inside, all you have to do is seal it and then you can put it in another spatial ring and it should be fine. However, the plants won’t grow while the dais is inside a spatial ring. You’ll need to have the dais out in the sun, or at least out by you, if you want the contents to grow. Other than that, the plants are totally stable within their storage device.”

I grinned and activated the dais. I watched as all of the plants in their plots of land with their strange qi related mechanisms as well as all of the shelves along the walls folded up and disappeared into the dais I was sitting on, which was slowly shrinking down. I stood up and picked up the dais, now a large silver tile, before walking towards the now open doorway out into the room where I saw the smiling faces of Keiko, Ellie, and Aria.

I grinned and shouted out to them. “I am victorious and I have a fantastic story to tell around the fire tonight!”

Epilogue

It turned out that my trial, turned Inheritance, happened to end right around dinner time. So, after I finished preparing dinner, having forcibly stopped Keiko from “helping”, we sat down for a meal of stew around the fire. As we ate, I regaled my companions of the trials I had gone through, producing each of the alchemical concoctions I had produced along the way as I told the story. When I got to the final trial, I pulled out the six silver and blue pills I had created for Ellie.

“Ellie, I made these for you.” I held one up to where she lay curled around the crown of my head. “If you take this, you’ll get a lot stronger!”

From beside me, where Sensei sat, I heard a panicked voice. “Stop right there, boyo! What are you doing?! Are you trying to hurt the young’un?”

I reflexively pulled the pill back before Ellie could snatch it from my fingers, earning myself a nip as I did so.

“What do you mean Sensei?” I said, completely oblivious to the confused stares I was getting from around the campfire. “This pill should be perfect for a growing Arctic Coatl. It’s full of water and metal qi, plus it should be perfect for harnessing the growth potential deep inside her.”

I was confused and hurt, I thought I had done a great job on those pills. Even Sensei had said I did a great job on them. I didn’t understand how they could hurt Ellie, but if he said that they could, I believed him.

Sensei’s voice calmed down, probably due to feeling how confused I was. “Those pills would be perfect for an Arctic Coatl, but that’s not what the little one is. She’s an Eight Scaled Coatl, also known as a Rainbow Coatl. They’re an advanced form of magical beast, frightfully intelligent and loving to those who they care for. They’re also devastatingly powerful, both offensively and defensively. They can use all of the types of qi.”

I was incredulous, “I’ve heard stories of Arctic Coatls and Ellie fits them to a ‘T’. What makes you think that she’s a so called ‘Rainbow Coatl’ instead of a regular Arctic Coatl?”

“I can feel the fire and wind qi inside her, they’re so strong that any Arctic Coatl would be curled up in agony, while she was comfortably curled up around your head.” His voice softened, “Don’t worry my boy, those pills you made are going to be fantastic, trust me, but they’re not where they need to be yet. You made some fantastic pill cores and with my assistance you’ll be able to turn them into Foundation Fortifying pills for yourself and your partner. Actually, seeing as you have six of them, you could technically make a pair of basic Foundation Building pills as well as four Foundation Fortifying pills. They won’t be as good as if I made them myself, but they’ll be a far cry from the garbage that’s out in the world now. I’m confident in that.”

Before I could reply, Keiko stood up and pointed at me. “Who are you talking to? Do I need to knock some sense back into you?” She hefted the Dawnblade menacingly.

Aria came to my rescue, as I was still in a state of shock at what I’d heard from Sensei just then. She disappeared from her seat in a flash, her bowl clanking to the ground in front of her seat as she appeared in front of Keiko. She held her hands out to keep Keiko back. “Let’s let Steven tell the rest of his story before we decide if we need to knock the sense back into him. Is that fair.” Aria looked back at me and winked, which pulled me out of my stupor.

I sputtered a second, “Oh, uh, yeah. I passed the last test with flying colors. In doing so, I learned that this was actually a place called the Inheritance of the Pot. The ‘Grand Prize’ was this alchemical pot,” I patted the black pot beside me, “which happens to contain a soul fragment of the Emperor cultivator who created the place. He asked me to call him Sensei and he’s going to be teaching me alchemy.” I sucked air greedily after saying all of that in one breath.

Sensei spoke up then, giving me time to catch up on my breathing. “Yes, please call me Sensei. In addition to teaching young Steven about alchemy, I’ll also be teaching those I find worthy of his companions about the mysteries of cultivation, qi, and the world of the past.” He chuckled. “The place you call the Inheritance of the Lovers was created by my son and his wife, so I trust that you’ll understand that I’m more than qualified to assist you in those matters.”

He paused for a moment, as if to think, before continuing. “I hear tell that, Keiko, you and Steven, are heading to the Inheritance of the Eclipse, or as it’s better known, Eclipse Academy. I have to tell you that this is a matter of the utmost importance, because if the savages who are currently using it get access to the later levels of the Academy, they’ll become more powerful than you can imagine.”

Keiko stood up straight and walked around Aria, glaring at her for a second as she did so. She walked up to me and put a finger on my chest.

“Well, if that’s the case? It’s time to get a move on, because from what Aria told me while you were in there… we’ll need all the help we can get to get into the Eclipse Academy, so we have to save the members of the Moonrise Clan who are left.” She prodded me with a finger once more.

I grinned, “We leave at dawn.”